Richard Powers - Generosity

“Where are you?” she asked. If he were within shooting distance of LaGuardia, they could get him in front of a camera that evening, while this wistful, penitent mood still ran him. Science. Real science.

“Front porch. I’ve been holing up here all week. I answered when I saw it was you. Tell me, Tonia. Should I have predicted this?”

She was merciful and did not quote back any of a dozen incriminating things he’d said to her on camera. She only wished she had a recorder running now.

He said, “You know, I’m sorry if this complicates the woman’s life. But choices are coming that we all simply have to hammer out.”

Paradise, his voice maintained, was still just down the road. And to bring it about, even suffering was a civic duty.

Then Thomas Kurton’s tone turned, tilted by some small change in the quality of light. “I heard from a colleague at MIT who has been looking over her fMRIs. He thinks there might be something distinctive about the way her hemispheres are communicating. It might help explain ”

Tonia Schiff gestured madly in the air to Garrett-a computer, a pad of paper, a wiretap, anything. “I don’t understand. Something structural, or just something she’s learned to ”

Kurton started to come alive again. “That’s not entirely clear. A good team needs to take a closer look.”

Say that the six thousand years of writing are a six-hundred-page novel, suitable for getting you through the longest captive flight. Romance, mystery, thriller: a little something for everyone. At a decade a page, it’s a slow starter. Only belatedly does the opening hook-secret marks that hurl meaning magically through time and space-reveal itself to be a Trojan horse. By page 200, memory is embalmed beyond recognition, lamented only when anyone still notices it’s gone. If a thing isn’t written down, you can forget about it. The rest is history.

The plot starts to pick up on page 350. After a ridiculously long exposition, the development section starts at last. Characters emerge, cities clashing in the freshness of youth, driven by the varied needs of their patron gods. Wars spread and trade expands. The characters harden and age. They join together into sprawling clans. Freed from the present, papyrus starts to spawn new subplots. By page 400, the basic conflict becomes clear: preservers against revisers, sufficers against maximizers, those who think the book is coming apart versus those who think it’s coming together.

There are a few longueurs for some readers in the middle two-thirds. But this is when the story is at its most desperate: when techne and sophia are still kin, when the distant climax is still ambiguous, the outcome a dead heat between salvation and ruin.

Page 575 starts a series of quick reveals (although each one foreshadowed, early on). Every discovery triggers two more. The cast of characters explodes, as do the sudden reverses. The book makes one of those massive finish-line sprints-twenty-five pages to wrap up all the lingering plot points and force a denouement. The last chapter is filled with deus ex machinas, and on the very final page, the very last paragraph, the characters throw off the limits of the Story So Far and complete their revolt. The ultimate sentence is a direct quote-“Author, we’re outta here”-the happy ending of the race’s own making.

Russell and Candace are clearing the table for Gabe’s choice of evening off-line methadone-Monsters and Mutants: Personal Edition-when she arrives. They all know it’s her, just from the rhythm of the buzzer. Candace implores Russell with a look, as if they might pretend that no one’s home. But all the lights are on, jazz piano trickles out through the windows, and where else would they be, on a work night, after dinner?

Gabe bounds up and presses the intercom. A homunculus voice comes through the tiny speaker, “Jibreel, Jibreel. As-Salaamu ’Alaykum. ”

The boy practically shouts back “ Wa ’Alaykum As-Salaam ,” and buzzes her in, in triumph. He’s scolding the woman by the time she reaches the top of the stairs. “I thought you decided we were scum or something.”

Her hands run through the boy’s hair, and he abides them. Her limbs move through a thicker liquid than air. “Jibreel, life has been teaching me.”

Stone holds back in the dining room, trying not to look relieved. He stands between the two women, hands in pockets, facing neither.

“Are you all right?” It must be all right to ask. An awful freedom infuses him, like that day at sixteen when he came home and told both parents he was agnostic. His father went to his grave neither forgiving nor believing him.

Thassa’s eyes close and her chin rises and falls. Her face is primal acquiescence. “I am,” she says, with a peace bordering on irony. She opens her eyes and fixes Candace, timidly. “I’m so sorry to stop in. I am living without a plan these days. My friends are moving me around the city.”

She steps forward and kisses both adults, four face-sides in all. Candace is hospitality itself. She gestures for Thassa to sit, which the Algerian does, as if the tiny dining room is sanctuary.

“Tea?” Candace offers. “Something herbal?” It scares Stone, how easy she is. “Gabe, if you want to put in ten minutes on the machine, you can.”

Pleasure ambushes the boy from all sides. “Can she come?”

“Maybe in a little bit, bird.”

Thassa nods, and he speeds off in a rapture. As soon as he disappears, the Kabyle announces, “I think I must sell these eggs of mine.”

She takes the couple’s shock for disapproval.

“Don’t hate me. The top offering is now $32,000, American. I know: this is insanity. But I could give half to my brother. Five times what he earns in one year! He could quit his killing job and find a good one. And half for my uncle and aunt, to pay on my student loans.”

“You can’t,” Stone says. He recoils at his own voice.

“Apparently you can, in this country. Our friend Sue Weston has done it twice, up in Evanston.”

“No,” Stone says. “I mean, you can’t do it to yourself.”

The woman turns to him, pleading. She claps the table with one palm. “Russell, what is the difference? You told me yourself you don’t believe my genes are the key to anything. So if some crazy person wants to pay for hallucinations, is it my job to stop them? The more they pay for this, the happier it will make them. And that is the product they want to buy, anyway!”

The argument repels him. He can’t believe she’s making it. “You can’t sell your own offspring.”

Her face crumples in pure bewilderment. “My what ? You say these eggs So you do think these genes are the secret real me!”

Thassa turns to Candace. Stone is mortified to see his girlfriend stand motionless between the table and wall, clutching her elbows. Then Weld comes out of her clinical coma and sits down across from Thassa. A dozen years of classes, research, and professional training have all prepared the counselor for this moment. Candace speaks, and for a moment, her voice drives all the madness from the room.

She explains her compromised position, the protocols of her profession, and the decision her superiors have taken on her behalf. It stuns Stone: the woman is a model of maturity, matter-of-fact, even-keeled. For a moment he thinks: Yes, this is what they should have done months ago. Just the sound of Candace’s voice shows the way back to port.

She stands, goes into her study, and returns with a glossy pamphlet. “This explains everything you need to know about the consultation facilities available to you. Here are the numbers of people you can call. This woman is very good; she can refer you to a reproductive medical counselor.”