Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

“To know, yes, certainly. But not to interfere.”

“I’m not planning to interfere.”

She offered a wan smile. “Why do I find that less than convincing?”

I began a question, but Janice said, “No, wait a minute. I want you to have this.”

She took a manila envelope from her handbag and passed it to me. I opened it and found a recent photograph of Kaitlin. Janice had printed it on slick stock; the image was crisp and defined.

Kait, at sixteen, was tall for her age and undeniably pretty. Fate had spared her the curse of adolescent acne and, judging by the poise in her expression, adolescent awkwardness as well. She looked somber but healthy.

For a moment I didn’t recognize what was unusual about the picture. Then I thought: Her hair. Kait had tied back her long dirty-blond hair in a braid, showing off her ears.

Both of them.

“That’s what you gave her, Scott. I wanted to thank you for that.”

The inner-ear prosthesis was of course invisible, but the cosmetic work was flawless. As it should be. The ear wasn’t false; genetically, it was hers, grown from Kaitlin’s own stem cells. There were no scars except for a faded suture line. But she had been self-conscious for years after the operation.

“When the bandages came off it was all still pink, you know, but perfect. Just like a new rose.”

I had been there for the surgery but not for the unveiling. That had happened during the crisis provoked by the Damascus arrival, and I’d been with Sue.

Janice went on, “I told her she was beautiful, right there in the hospital in front of the doctor and the nurses. She cocked her head, as if she wasn’t sure where my voice was coming from. It takes time to, you know, adjust. You know what she said to me?”

“What?”

A single tear tracked down Janice’s cheek. “She said, ‘You don’t have to shout.’”

The trouble started, Janice said, when Kaitlin failed to come home from a youth group meeting.

“What kind of youth group?”

“It’s just a — well—” Janice faltered.

“There’s no point doing this if we’re not honest,” I said.

“It’s a youth division of this organization Whit belongs to. You have to understand, Scott. It’s not a pro-Kuin thing. It’s just people who want to talk about alternatives to armed conflict.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Janice — Whit is a Copperhead ?”

Lately the newspapers had revived the Civil War term “Copperhead” as a blanket insult for the various Kuinist movements. Janice lowered her eyes and said, “We don’t use that term,” by which I gathered she meant Whit didn’t like it. “I’m not into politics. You know that. Even Whit, he only got involved because some of the people in upper management were joining. Preparing for a war we probably won’t even have to fight, that’s just not good economic sense, Whit says.”

This was a standard Copperhead argument, and it was disturbing to hear it from Janice’s lips. Not that it didn’t contain a mote of truth. But beating under it was the Kuinist disdain for democratic process, the notion that Kuin might bring order to a planet divided along too many economic, religious, and ecological fracture lines.

I had followed the rise of the Copperhead movement on the web — inevitably, since Sue considered it significant and Morris considered it a potential threat. What I had seen, I disliked.

“And he dragged Kaitlin into this?”

“Kait wanted to go. At first he took her to the grownup meetings, but then she got interested in the youth arm.”

“So you let her join — just like that?”

She looked at me pleadingly. “Honestly, Scotty, I didn’t see anything wrong with it. They weren’t making pipe bombs, for God’s sake. It was just a social thing. I mean, they played baseball. They put on plays. Teenagers , Scott. She was making all these new friends — she had real friends for the first time in her life. What was I supposed to do, lock her in the house?”

“I’m not here to judge.”

“Right.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

She sighed. “Well, I guess there were some radicals in the membership. It’s hard to get away from it, you know. The young people are especially vulnerable. It’s in the news, the net. She used to talk about it sometimes, about—” She lowered her voice. “About Kuin, and how you shouldn’t condemn what you don’t understand, that kind of thing. She was more serious about it than I imagined.”

“She went to a meeting and didn’t come back.”

“No, nor did ten others, most of them older than Kait. Apparently they had been talking for weeks about the idea of a pilgrimage, what they call a haj.”

I closed my eyes.

“But the police say they’re probably still in town,” Janice hurried on, “probably squatting in an empty building with a bunch of other would-be radicals, talking big and shoplifting food. I hope that’s true, but it’s… bad enough.”

“Have you looked for her yourself?”

“The police said not to.”

“How about Whit?”

“Whit says we should cooperate with the police. And that goes for you, too, Scott.”

“Can you give me the name of somebody on the police force I can talk to?”

She took out her address book, copied a name and phone address onto a paper napkin, but she did it grudgingly, giving me long sour looks.

I said, “Also the name of this Copperhead club Whit belongs to.”

At that she balked. “I don’t want you making trouble.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Bullshit. You come to town with all this, this moral outrage —”

“My daughter’s missing. That’s why I’m here. What part of that are you afraid of?”

She paused.

Then she said, “Kait’s been away less than a week. She could come home tomorrow. I have to believe that. I have to believe the police are doing all they can. But I can see that look in your eyes. And I hate it.”

“What look?”

“Like you’re getting ready to grieve.”

“Janice—”

She slapped the table with her open hand. “ No . Scott. I’m sorry. I’m grateful for all you’ve done for Kait. I know how hard you tried. But I can’t tell you what organizations Whit belongs to. That’s his private life. We discussed all this with the police and that’s it, for now, anyway. So don’t look at me with those, those fucking funeral eyes .”

I was hurt, but I didn’t blame Janice, even when she stood up and stalked out into the sun-bleached street. I knew how she felt. Kaitlin was in danger, and Janice was asking herself what she could have done better, how she had dropped the ball, how things had gone so bad so fast.

I had been asking myself those same questions for ten years now. But it was a new experience for Janice.

After lunch I drove to Clarion Pharmaceuticals, a big industrial compound out where the suburbs met the wheat fields, and told the gate guard I wanted to see Mr. Delahunt. The guard stuck a card under the left front wiper and reminded me to pick up a visitor’s pass at the main entrance. But Clarion’s security was lax. I parked and walked through an open door near the loading bays and took an elevator up to what the directory said was Whit’s office.

And walked past his secretary as if I belonged there, into a warren of doorless rooms where men and women in crisp suits held phone conferences, until I found Whitman Delahunt himself draining filtered spring water from a cooler in the narrow hall. His eyes went wide when he saw me.

Whit was as impeccable as ever. A little grayer at the temples and wider at the waist, but he carried it well. He had even been smiling faintly to himself, though the smile vanished when he spotted me. He threw his paper cup into the trash. “Scott,” he said. “Jesus. You could have called.”