Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

The universe became small and bright and very warm.

Rain and mist followed them from Clarksburg. The old blue Buick’s tires made a steady hum on wet roads pushing and curling through limestone cuts and low round green hills. The wipers swung short black tails, taking Kaye back to Lado’s whining little Fiat on the Georgian Military Road.

“Do you still dream about them?” Kaye asked as Mitch drove.

“Too tired to dream,” Mitch said. He smiled at her, then focused on the road.

“I’m curious to know what happened to them,” Kaye said lightly.

Mitch made a face. “They lost their baby and they died.”

Kaye saw she had touched a nerve and drew back. “Sorry.”

“I told you, I’m a little wacko,” Mitch said. “I think with my nose and I care what happened to three mummies fifteen thousand years ago.”

“You are far from being wacko,” Kaye said. She shook her hair, then let out a yell.

“Whoa!” Mitch cringed.

“We’re going to travel across America!” Kaye cried. “Across the heartland, and we’re going to make love every time we stop somewhere, and we’re going to learn what makes this great nation tick.”

Mitch pounded the wheel and laughed.

“But we aren’t doing this right,” she said, suddenly prim. “We don’t have a big poodle dog.”

“What?”

“Travels with Charley,” Kaye said. “John Steinbeck had a truck he called Rocinante, with a camper on the back. He wrote about traveling with a big poodle. It’s a great book.”

“Did Charley have attitude?”

“Damn right,” Kaye said.

“Then I’ll be the poodle.”

Kaye buzzed his hair with mock clippers.

“Steinbeck took more than a week, I bet,” Mitch said.

“We don’t have to hurry,” Kaye said. “I don’t want this to ever end. You’ve given me back my life, Mitch.”

West of Athens, Ohio, they stopped for lunch at a small diner in a bright red caboose. The caboose sat on a concrete pad and two rails off a frontage road beside the state highway, in a region of low hills covered with maples and dogwood. The food served in the dim interior, illuminated by tiny bulbs in railway lanterns, was adequate and nothing more: a chocolate malt and cheeseburger for Mitch and patty melt and bitter instant iced tea for Kaye. A radio in the kitchen in the back of the caboose played Garth Brooks and Selay Sammi. All they could see of the short-order cook was a white chef’s hat bobbing to the music.

As they left the diner, Kaye noticed three shabbily dressed adolescents wandering beside the frontage road: two girls wearing black skirts and torn gray leggings and a boy in jeans and a travel-stained windbreaker. Like a lagging and downcast puppy, the boy walked several steps behind the girls. Kaye seated herself in the Buick. “What are they doing out here?”

“Maybe they live here,” Mitch said.

“There’s just the house up the hill behind the diner,” Kaye said with a sigh.

“You’re getting a motherly look,” Mitch warned.

Mitch backed the car out of the gravel lot and was about to swing out onto the frontage road when the boy waved vigorously. Mitch stopped and rolled down the window. A light drizzle filled the air with silvery mist scented by trees and the Buick’s exhaust.

“Excuse me, sir. You going west?” the boy asked. His ghostly blue eyes swam in a narrow, pale face. He looked worried and exhausted and beneath his clothes he seemed to be made of a bundle of sticks, and not a very large bundle.

The two girls hung back. The shorter and darker girl covered her face with her hands, peeping between her fingers like a shy child.

The boy’s hands were dirty, his nails black. He saw Mitch’s attention and rubbed them self-consciously on his pants.

“Yeah,” Mitch said.

“I’m really really sorry to bother you. We wouldn’t ask, sir, but it’s tough finding rides and it’s getting wet. If you’re going west, we could use a lift for a while, hey?”

The boy’s desperation and a goofy gallantry beyond his years touched Mitch. He examined the boy closely, his answer snagged somewhere between sympathy and suspicion.

“Tell them to get in,” Kaye said.

The boy stared at them in surprise. “You mean, now?”

“We’re going west.” Mitch pointed at the highway beyond the long chain-link fence.

The boy opened the rear door and the girls jogged forward. Kaye turned and rested her arm on the back of the seat as they jumped in and slid across. “Where are you heading?” she asked.

“Cincinnati,” the boy said. “Or as far past as we can go,” he added hopefully. “Thanks a million.”

“Put on your seat belts,” Mitch said. “There’s three back there.”

The girl who hid her face appeared to be no more than seventeen, hair black and thick, skin coffee-colored, fingers long and knobby with short and chipped nails painted violet. Her companion, a white blond, seemed older, with a broad, easygoing face worn down to vacancy. The boy was no more than nineteen. Mitch wrinkled his nose involuntarily; they hadn’t bathed in days.

“Where are you from?” Kaye asked.

“Richmond,” the boy said. “We’ve been hitchhiking, sleeping out in the woods or the grass. It’s been hard on Delia and Jayce. This is Delia.” He pointed to the girl covering her face.

“I’m Jayce,” said the blond absently.

“My name is Morgan,” the boy added.

“You don’t look old enough to be out on your own,” Mitch said. He brought the car up to speed on the highway.

“Delia couldn’t stand it where she was,” Morgan said. “She wanted to go to L.A. or Seattle. We decided to go with her.”

Jayce nodded.

“That’s not much of a plan,” Mitch said.

“Any relatives out west?” Kaye asked.

“I have an uncle in Cincinnati,” Jayce said. “He might put us up for a while.”

Delia leaned back in the seat, face still hidden. Morgan licked his lips and craned his neck to look up at the car’s headliner, as if to read a message there. “Delia was pregnant but her baby was born dead,” he said. “She got some skin problems because of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaye said. She held out her hand. “My name is Kaye. You don’t have to hide, Delia.”

Delia shook her head, hands following. “It’s ugly,” she said.

“I don’t mind it,” Morgan said. He sat as far to the left-hand side of the car as he could, leaving a foot of space between himself and Jayce. “Girls are more sensitive. Her boyfriend told her to get out. Real stupid. What a waste, hey.”

“It’s too ugly,” Delia said softly.

“Come on, sweetie,” Kaye said. “Is it something a doctor could help with?”

“I got it before the baby came,” Delia said.

“It’s okay,” Kaye said soothingly, and reached back to stroke the girl’s arm. Mitch caught glimpses in the rearview mirror, fascinated by this aspect of Kaye. Gradually, Delia lowered her hands, her fingers relaxing. The girl’s face was blotched and mottled, as if splattered with reddish-brown paint.

“Did your boyfriend do that to you?” Kaye asked.

“No,” Delia said. “It just came, and everybody hated it.”

“She got a mask,” Jayce said. “It covered her face for a few weeks, and then it fell off and left those marks.”

Mitch felt a chill. Kaye faced forward and lowered her head for a moment, composing herself.

“Delia and Jayce don’t want me touching them,” Morgan said, “even though we’re friends, because of the plague. You know. Herod’s.”

“I don’t want to get pregnant,” Jayce said. “We’re really hungry.”

“We’ll stop and get some food,” Kaye said. “Would you like to take a shower, get cleaned up?”