Robert Wilson - The Divide

But it was not a question he could bring himself to ask. He was not a child, Max was right; but neither was he old enough to endure the possibility that he might be fundamentally alone in the world.

Life with the Woodwards, then, began as a deception, a concealment, not always successful. But at least he understood the rules of the game. For years John chose to believe that Max would eventually come and get him.

Even if they couldn’t be together, Max was still his truest father; Max cared about him.

He banked this belief in the most private recesses of his mind; he never allowed the flame to flicker. But Max did not come. And on his twelfth birthday, after a perfunctory celebration with the Woodwards, John began to admit to himself that Max might never come.

So he broke a promise. He went looking for Max.

It was spring, and he rode a bus into the city through thawing snow-patches and muddy lots. He had packed a bag lunch, solemnly. He ate it sitting on a transit bench outside Marga’s old house, a couple of blocks from the university. Did he want to see Marga? He wasn’t sure. But no one entered or left the house. The shutters were closed and the siding had been painted eggshell blue. Maybe Marga had moved away.

He stood and walked through the raw spring air to the research complex, to Max’s office there.

He opened the door and walked in. Max looked up, maybe expecting to see an undergraduate, frowning when he recognized John. Max was older than John remembered him, fashionably shaggier; he had grown his sideburns long.

His eyes widened and then narrowed. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“Don’t be flippant. I could lose my tenure. People in this building have long memories.” He frowned at his watch. “Meet me in the parking lot. I have a car there—a black Ford.”

John left the building and waited twenty minutes in the pallid sunlight, shivering on the curb beside the automobile. Then Max came striding out and opened the passenger door for him. John climbed aboard. “I wanted to see you,” John said. “I wanted to talk.”

“It’s dangerous for both of us.”

“I understand. You don’t want to lose your job.”

“I don’t want to lose my job, and I presume you don’t want to be brought to the attention of any powerful interests. We’re privileged to be an inactive file in someone’s cabinet. I would like to keep it that way.”

“I thought you might try to see me. At least try.”

Max compressed his lips. “I’ve driven past the Woodwards’ house from time to time. Once I saw you walking to school. I have a contact at the Board of Education; he’s been forwarding your records—”

“But we haven’t talked.”

“We’re not allowed to talk.”

“Revolutionary,” John mocked.

“You know I’m not.”

“But you’re brave enough to bend your ethics from time to time. For instance, a little genetic manipulation.”

“Neurological, not genetic. Your genes are perfectly ordinary, I’m afraid. Do you resent it—being what you are?”

John shrugged.

Max said, “I rescued you from mediocrity.”

“You rescued me from the human race!”

“It amounts to the same thing.”

“Jesus, Max, how pathetically unimaginative!”

His rage took him by surprise: it was a sudden huge pressure in his chest. He said, “I’m more than you ever dreamed of. I could kill us both, you know. It’s been seven years. Things have changed. If I wanted you to you’d drive right off the retaining wall of this freeway. You don’t believe it? But just think, Max. Think how nice it would be. Like flying. Flying out into the void. A little gas, a little twist of the wheel. Like flying, Max—”

The words had spilled out of him. He stopped, aware of the sweat beading on Max’s brow, the way his fingers trembled on the wheel.

My God, he thought. It’s true. I could do that.

He felt suddenly cold.

“You can drop me at the off ramp,” he said.

Max pulled up obediently near a bus stop, wordless and wide-eyed. John climbed out without saying goodbye. He watched as the black Ford shuddered away from the curb and merged uncertainly with the traffic.

Twelve years old.

Alone on this empty, wide boulevard.

It was nighttime now, and very cold.

A week later, John retrieved the journals from Max’s safe.

He told the Woodwards he was sleeping over at a friend’s house. They were pleased to hear that he had finally made a friend and didn’t press him for details. He took the night bus into town and waited until the research unit was locked and dark. Then he shinnied up a maple tree and through one of the high access windows, hinged open to moderate the fierce heating system.

He took the documents from the safe under Max’s desk, photocopied them on the Xerox machine in the adjoining room, then returned the originals. He folded the copies and tucked them under his belt in order to keep his hands free.

In the corridor outside Max’s office he was surprised by a security guard.

The guard was a fat bald man in a blue suit with a pistol at his hip. He came around an angle in the hallway and stood gawking at John for a long instant before dashing forward.

John discovered that he was calm, that he was able to return the guard’s stare and stand his ground. He should have been frightened. Instead, he felt something else … a heady combination of power and contempt. Because the guard was transparent: every twitch betrayed his thoughts. He was a machine, John thought. A noisy engine of belligerence and fear.

He spoke up before the guard could find words, made his own voice calm and uninflected: “I want to leave. No one has to know I was here.” Then watched the wheels turning as the imperatives registered, uncertainty turning down the corners of the man’s mouth and narrowing his eyes. If I phone this in I’ll have to fill out a fucking report; it was as good as reading his mind. “I ought to kick your ass,” the guard began, but it was not so much a threat as a question: can I say this?

“Don’t,” John said.

The guard backed off a step.

Amazing. John knew about suggestibility and the phenomenon of hypnosis, but he was surprised at how effortless it was, how utterly pleasurable. He had bypassed all the barriers; he was talking now directly to the delicate core of self behind this uniform: he pictured something wet and pinkly quivering, an “ego.” It was an easy target.

He said, “Open the door at the back.”

The guard turned and led him down the hallway.

At the door the spell seemed to falter. “Thieving little bastard,” the guard said. “I ought to—”

But John silenced him with a look.

He transferred the thick manila folder of photocopies from his belt to his hand. The guard was standing directly behind him, but didn’t see—or didn’t want to.

John closed the door and listened as the lock slid home.

The night air was cold and bracing. He stood for a moment in the shadow of a tree, smiling. He felt good. Felt free. Freer than he had ever been before.

Reading the research notes, he was shocked to find Marga described as “an unemployed, gravid white female of doubtful morals”—shocked in general by the tone of callous indifference Max had assumed. But he supposed Max had already cast his lot with Homo Superior. This was contempt by proxy, the exploitation of the old order for the sake of the new. Max did not believe in “the people.” Presumably Marga was a thief and a torturer manqué.

The story of his genesis, however, the intrauterine injections and the forced cortical growth, made perfect sense. He had guessed much of this before.