Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

“He has a headache? Kaye said. “A migraine. He gets them sometimes.” On the gravel drive waited a sheriff’s department car and a small ambulance. Beyond the vehicles, the scrubby wide lawn of the house stretched to a fence. She could smell the damp green and the country soil on the cold night air.

“We have no choice, Miz Lang.”

There was not much she could do. If Kaye resisted, they would simply come back with more men.

“I’ll come. My husband shouldn’t be moved.”

“You may both be carriers, ma’am. We need to take both of you.”

“I can examine your husband and see whether his condition might respond to medical treatment,” Clark said.

Kaye hated the first sensation of tears coming. Frustration, helplessness, aloneness. She saw Clark and Jurgenson look over her shoulder, heard someone moving, whirled as if she might be taken by ambush.

It was Mitch. He walked with a distinct jerk, eyes half-closed, hands extended, like Frankenstein’s monster. “Kaye, what is it?” he asked, his voice thick. Simply talking made his face wrinkle with pain.

Clark and Jurgenson moved back now, and the nearest deputy unlatched his holster. Kaye turned and glared at them. “It’s a migraine! He has a migraine]”

“Who are they?” Mitch asked. He nearly fell over. Kaye went to him, helped him remain standing. “I can’t see very well,” he murmured.

Clark and Jurgenson conferred in whispers. “Please bring him out on the porch, Miz Lang,” Jurgenson said, his voice strained. Kaye saw a gun in the deputy’s hand.

“What is this?”

“They’re from the Taskforce,” Kaye said. “They want us to come with them.”

“Why?”

“Something about being infectious.”

“No,” Mitch said, struggling in her grasp.

“That’s what I told them. But Mitch, there isn’t anything we can do.”

“No!” Mitch shouted, waving one arm. “Come back when I can see you, when I can talk! Leave my wife alone, for God’s sake.”

“Please come out on the porch, ma’am,” the deputy said. Kaye knew the situation was getting dangerous. Mitch was in no condition to be rational. She did not know what he might do to protect her. The men outside were afraid. These were awful times and awful things could happen and nobody would be punished; they might be shot and the house burned to the ground, as if they had plague.

“My wife is pregnant,” Mitch said. “Please leave her alone.” He tried to move toward the front door. Kaye stood beside him, guiding him.

The deputy kept his gun pointed toward the porch, but held it with both hands, arms straight. Jurgenson told him to put the gun away. He shook his head. “I don’t want them doing something stupid,” he said in a low voice.

“We’re coming out,” Kaye said. “Don’t be idiots. We’re not sick and we’re not infectious.”

Jurgenson told them to walk through the door and step down off the porch. “We have an ambulance. We’ll take you both to where they can look after your husband.”

Kaye helped Mitch outside and down the porch steps. He was sweating profusely and his hands were damp and cold. “I still can’t see very well,” he said into Kaye’s ear. “Tell me what they’re doing.”

“They want to take us away.” They stood in the yard now. Jurgenson motioned to Clark and he opened the back of the ambulance. Kaye saw there was a young woman behind the wheel of the ambulance. The driver stared owlishly through the rolled-up window. “Don’t do anything silly,” Kaye said to Mitch. “Just walk steadily. Did the pills help?”

Mitch shook his head. “It’s bad. I feel so stupid…leaving you alone. Vulnerable.” His words were thick and his eyes almost closed. He could not stand the glare of the headlights. The deputies turned on their flashlights and aimed them at Kaye and Mitch. Mitch hid his eyes with one hand and tried to turn away.

“Do not move!” the deputy with the gun ordered. “Keep your hands in the open!”

Kaye heard more engines. The second deputy turned. “Cars coming,” he said. “Trucks. Lots of them.”

She counted four pairs of headlights moving down the road to the house. Three pickup trucks and a car pulled into the yard, kicking up gravel, brakes squealing. The trucks carried men in the back — men with black hair and checkered shirts, leather jackets, windbreakers, men with ponytails, and then she saw Jack, Sue’s husband.

Jack opened the driver’s-side door of his truck and stepped down, frowning. He held up his hand and the men stayed in the backs of the pickups.

“Good evening,” Jack said, his frown vanishing, his face suddenly neutral. “Hello, Kaye, Mitch. Your phones aren’t working.”

The deputies stared at Jurgenson and Clark for guidance. The gun remained pointed down at the gravel drive. Wendell Packer and Maria Konig got out of the car and approached Mitch and Kaye. “It’s all right,” Packer told the four men, now forming an open square, defensive. He held up his hands, showing they were empty. “We brought some friends to help them move. Okay?”

“Mitch has a migraine,” Kaye called. Mitch tried to shrug her off, stand on his own, but his legs were too wobbly.

“Poor baby,” Maria said, walking in a half circle around the deputies. “It’s all right,” she told them. “We’re from the University of Washington.”

“We’re from the Five Tribes,” Jack said. “These are our friends. We’re helping them move.” The men in the pickups kept their hands in the open but smiled like wolves, like bandits.

Clark tapped Jurgenson on the shoulder. “Let’s not make any headlines,” he said. Jurgenson agreed with a nod. Clark got into the ambulance and Jurgenson joined the deputies in the Caprice. Without another word, the two vehicles backed up, turned, and grumbled down the long gravel drive into the twilight.

Jack stepped forward with his hands in his jeans pockets and a big, energized smile. “That was fun,” he said.

Wendell and Kaye helped Mitch squat on the ground. “I’ll be fine,” Mitch said, head in hands. “I couldn’t do anything. Jesus, I couldn’t do anything.”

“It’s all right,” Maria said.

Kaye knelt beside him, touching her cheek to his forehead. “Let’s get you inside.” She and Maria helped him to his feet and half carried him toward the house.

“We heard from Oliver in New York,” Wendell said. “Christopher Dicken called him and said something ugly was coming down fast. He said you weren’t answering your phones.”

“That was late this afternoon,” Maria said.

“Maria called Sue,” Wendell said. “Sue called Jack. Jack was visiting Seattle. Nobody had heard from you.”

“I was out here taking a meeting at the Lummi Casino,” Jack said. He waved at the men in the trucks. “We were talking about new games and machines. They volunteered to come along. Good thing, I suppose. I think we should go to Kumash now.”

“I’m ready,” Mitch said. He walked up the steps on his own power, turned, and held out his hands, staring at them. “I can do this. I’ll be fine.”

“They can’t touch you there,” Jack said. He stared down the drive, eyes glittering. “They’re going to make Indians out of everybody. Godamn bastards.”

Mitch stood on the crest of a low chalky mound overlooking the Wild Eagle Casino and Resort. He tilted his head back and squinted at the bright sun. At nine in the morning, the air was still and already hot. In normal times the casino, a gaudy bunch of red and gold and white in the bleached earth tones of southeastern Washington, employed four hundred people, three hundred from the Five Tribes.