Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Mitch circled, kicked at a metal folding chair, waved his hands helplessly.

“She wants to help us,” Kaye said.

“How can we trust her now?”

“There’s no need to be paranoid.”

Mitch stopped short. “There’s a big old train rolling down the tracks. We’re in its headlights . I know that , Kaye. It’s not just the government. Every pregnant woman on Earth is suspect. Augustine — that absolute bastard — he’s making sure that you’re all pariahs! I could kill him!”

Kaye took hold of his arms and tugged gently, then hugged him. He was angry enough to try to shrug her off and continue stalking around the room. She held on tighter. “Please, enough, Mitch.”

“And now you’re out here — exposed to anybody who might walk by!” he said, arms quivering.

“I refuse to become a hothouse flower,” Kaye said defensively.

He gave up and dropped his shoulders. “What can we do? When are they going to send police vans with thugs in them to round us up?”

“I don’t know,” Kaye said. “Something’s got to give. I believe in this country, Mitch. People won’t put up with this.”

Mitch sat in a folding chair at the end of an aisle. The room was brightly lit, with fifty empty chairs arranged in five rows, a linen-covered table and coffee service at the back. “Wen-dell and Maria say the pressure is just incredible. They’ve filed protests, but no one in the department will admit to anything. Funding gets cut, offices reassigned, labs harassed by inspectors. I’m losing all my faith, Kaye. I saw it happen to me after…”

“I know,” Kaye said.

“And now the State Department won’t let Lrock return from Irnrbruck.”

“When did you hear that?”

“Merton called from Bethesda this afternoon. Augustine is trying to shut this down completely. It’ll be just you and me — and you’ll have to go into hiding!”

Kaye sat beside him. She had heard nothing from any of her former colleagues back East. Nothing from Judith. Perversely, she wanted to talk with Marge Cross. She wanted to reach out for all the support left in the world.

She missed her mother and father terribly.

Kaye leaned over and put her head on Mitch’s shoulder. He rubbed her scalp gently with his big hands.

They had not even discussed the real news of the morning. Important things got lost so quickly in the fray. “I know something you don’t know,” Kaye said.

“What’s that?”

“We’re going to have a daughter.”

Mitch stopped breathing for a moment and his face wrinkled up. “My God,” he said.

“It was one or the other,” Kaye said, grinning at his reaction.

“It’s what you wanted.”

“Did I say that?”

“Christmas Eve. You said you wanted to buy dolls for her.”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I just get a little shock every time we take a new step, that’s all.”

“Dr. Galbreath says she’s healthy. There’s nothing wrong with her. She has the extra chromosomes…but we knew that.”

Mitch put his hand on her stomach. “I can feel her moving,” he said, and got on the floor in front of Kaye to lay his ear against her. “She’s going to be so beautiful .”

The hotel manager walked into the meeting room with a clutch of papers and looked down on them in surprise. In his fifties, with a full head of curly brown hair and a plump, nondescript face, he could have been anyone’s mediocre uncle. Mitch got up and brushed offhis pants.

“My wife,” Mitch said, embarrassed.

“Of course,” the manager said. He narrowed his pale blue eyes and took Mitch aside. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she? You didn’t tell me about that. There’s no mention in here…” He shuffled through the papers, looked up at Mitch accusingly. “None at all. We have to be so careful now about public gatherings and exposures.”

Mitch leaned against the Buick, chin in hand, rubbing. His fingers made a small rasping sound though he had shaved that morning. He pulled his hand back. Kaye stood before him.

“I’m going to drive you back to the house,” he said.

“What about the Buick?”

He shook his head. “I’ll pick it up later. Wendell can give me a ride.”

“Where do we go from here?” Kaye asked. “We could try another hotel. Or rent a lodge hall.”

Mitch made a disgusted face. “The bastard was looking for an excuse. He knew your name. He called somebody. He checked up, like a good little Nazi.” He flung his hands in the air. “Long live America the free!”

“If Brock can’t enter the country again—”

“We’ll hold the conference on the Internet,” Mitch said. “We’ll figure out something. But it’s you I’m concerned about right now. Something’s bound to happen.”

“What?”

“Don’t you feel it?” He rubbed his forehead. “The look in that manager’s eyes, that cowardly bastard. He’s like a frightened goat. He doesn’t know jack shit about biology. He lives his life in small safe moves and he doesn’t buck the system. Nearly everybody is like him. They get pushed around and they run in the direction they’re pushed.”

“That sounds so cynical,” Kaye said.

“It’s political reality. I’ve been so stupid up until now. Letting you travel alone. You could be picked up, exposed—”

“I don’t want to be kept in a cave, Mitch.”

Mitch winced.

Kaye put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You know what I mean.”

“Everything’s in place. Kaye. You saw it in Georgia. I saw it in the Alps. We’ve become strangers . People hate us.”

“They hate me,” Kaye said, her face going pale. “Because I’m pregnant.”

“They hate me, too.”

“But they’re not asking you to register like you were a Jew in Germany.”

“Not yet,” Mitch said. “Let’s go.” He wrapped his arm around her and escorted her to the Toyota. Kaye found it awkward to match his long stride. “I think we may have a day or two, maybe three. Then…somebody’s going to do something. You’re a thorn in their sides. A double thorn.”

“Why double?”

“Celebrities have power,” Mitch said. “People know who you are, and you know the truth.”

Kaye got into the passenger side and rolled down the window. The inside of the car was warm. Mitch closed the door for her. “Do I?”

“You’re damn right you do. Sue made you an offer. Let’s look into it. I’ll tell Wendell where we’re going. Nobody else.”

“I like the house,” Kaye said.

“We’ll find another,” Mitch said.

Mark Augustine seemed almost feverish in his triumph. He laid the pictures out for Dicken and slipped the videotape into the office player. Dicken picked up the first picture, held it close, squinted. The usual medical photo colors, strange orange and olive flesh and bright pink lesions, out-of-focus facial features. A man, in his forties perhaps, alive but far from happy. Dicken picked up the next picture, a closeup of the man’s right arm, marked with roseate blotches, a yellow plastic ruler laid alongside to indicate size. The largest blotch spread over a diameter of seven centimeters, with an angry sore at the center, crusted with thick yellow fluid. Dicken counted seven blotches on the right arm alone.

“I showed these to the staff this morning,” Augustine said, holding out the remote and starting the tape. Dicken went on to the next few pictures. The man’s body was covered with more large roseate lesions, some forming huge blisters, proud, assertive, and no doubt intensely painful. “We have samples in for analysis now, but the field team did a quick serology check for SHEVA, just to confirm. The man’s wife is in her second trimester with a second-stage SHEVA fetus and still shows SHEVA type 3-s. The man is now clear of SHEVA, so we can rule out the lesions are caused by SHEVA, which we wouldn’t expect at any rate.”