The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (108 page)

I jerked upright and looked at the sleeping bag by the cold fireplace. The bag was empty. My mind went cold and clear. “See if both cars are here.”

Of course, they weren’t. My Lexus was gone.

“He doesn’t even have a driver’s permit,” Leila said.

She was driving; my legs ached too much. I had made Jane stay with Bridget, who was still asleep. Leila drove slowly in the dark, and as we passed the places where the mountain road dropped off sheerly, she shuddered. But her hands on the wheel didn’t falter. This wasn’t the teenage dwarf I had married, the girl dancing exuberantly at the LPA convention, the young bride who had blindly accepted my arrogant authority.

“I thought he understood how dangerous it would be to go back home,” Leila said. “I thought he understood.”

“He did. That’s why he’s going.”

She glanced over at me, then returned to her driving, her endless scanning of the roadside. Was that a break in the bushes? Had a car gone off there? Was that a skid mark in the headlights?

She said, “No, that’s not why. It’s that girl. Belinda. She wants to go home, and I saw her whispering to him all afternoon, and I should have realized . . . but he doesn’t like children! And she’s only eleven! I didn’t think she could influence him.”

Leila was right. I should have anticipated this; I’d seen far more of Belinda than Leila had. Belinda would have known exactly what Ethan was feeling, exactly how to play on his weak spots. She didn’t even have to think about it, merely let her instincts take over. Empathy in action.

“Barry, he’s not a bad kid underneath. He can be very sweet sometimes. You’ve never seen that.”

“I believe you,” I said, wondering if I did. “And the other times – well, he can’t help it, can he? It’s in his genes.”

“No, it’s not.” The intensity of her anger surprised me, even as she kept on scanning, looking, dreading what she might see. “You attribute everything to genes. It’s not true. Genes made you a dwarf, and you think that’s wrecked your life, but genes didn’t make you so bitter and unhappy. I know that because when we met, you weren’t bitter and unhappy. And you were a dwarf then, too. I didn’t want Ethan around your self-created misery. I still don’t. And maybe he does have some predisposition to danger and anger and impulsiveness, like the doctors say. But he doesn’t have to indulge it. He chooses to do that. Just like you choose to be miserable and envious.”

“Leila, there’s so much wrong with that simplistic analysis that I don’t even know where to start correcting it.”

“Then don’t. I don’t need your ‘corrections.’ You can’t – what’s that!”

I saw it a second after she did. The Lexus, smashed head-first against a tree, which was the only thing that had kept it from going over the embankment.

Leila, younger and with less spinal constriction, was first out of the Ford, running toward the car, uttering loud wordless cries. I followed her, stumbling as my treacherous legs collapsed under me, getting up, trying again to run. Those were the longest seconds – minutes, hours, eons – of my life. Until. I. Reached. That. Car.

They were both alive. Belinda seemed unhurt, mewling in her seat belt. Ethan, who had taken the brunt of the crash – had he turned the wheel at the last minute to save the little girl? – slumped unconscious against the steering wheel. Blood trickled through his bright hair.

“Don’t move him,” Leila said frantically. “If anything’s broken . . . I’m going for help!”

She ran back to her Ford. I undid Belinda’s seat belt, yanked her out, and dropped her on the dark roadside weeds. I could feel her fear, just as she could feel my fury. She shrank back against the fender. I climbed into the passenger seat beside my son.

He stirred. “Mommy . . .”

“She’ll be here soon, Ethan. Help will be here soon.”

He said something else, before sliding again into unconsciousness. It might have been, “Fuck you.”

Maybe no child, other than those with Arlen’s Syndrome, understands how a parent feels. Maybe I hadn’t earned the right to even be considered a parent. Maybe, as Leila said, my bitterness and anger would be worse for Ethan than if I weren’t there at all for him. I don’t know, any more than I know any more what’s genetic and what’s not. Did Jane go all maternal with the twins because she had more oxytorin receptors, or did The Group’s virus make her a good candidate for growing more oxytorin receptors because she’d always had a penchant for wounded birds anyway? Susceptibility to the genemod will vary among people.

In the darkness, I sat for a long time beside my injured son. Finally, with great deliberation, I spat on my fingers and gently, gently, pushed them inside his mouth. I felt the softness of his slack tongue, his strong young teeth. Strong teeth, strong long bones. He was not a dwarf I spat a second time on my hand and did it again.

Overhead, medical and police flyers droned in the dark night When they arrived, I borrowed a cell phone and comlinked Elaine Brown, Human Protection Agency.

A week later, I sit in a Temporary Government Quarantine Facility in San Diego, watching TV. On the other side of the negative-pressure barriers, researchers from the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, dressed in Level 4 biohazard suits, go through two airlocks to reach Jane and me. The Barrington twins are here, too, but not Leila or Ethan. Ethan is in a hospital in LA, and she is with him, along with her boyfriend from Oregon. He flew down immediately to be with her.

They treat us well here. There are endless medical tests, of course, but I’m used to that. Everyone is both respectful and curious. If they’re also frightened, I don’t sense it, but of course Bridget and Belinda do. Bridget is a favorite with the staff. Belinda wants to go home, although she likes all the attention from Jane. The twins’ parents “visit” via Link several times each day. Frieda sometimes has a distinct look of relief. Her kids are behind glass, and she can break the link with Belinda whenever she needs to.

The Link has brought the most attention to Jane. Death threats, pleas for help, fan letters, offers from the ACLU to sue The Group if any members of that organization can be found, which so far they haven’t. Jane would be a high-profile and appealing case. The movie is on again, but not with the same script, or even with the same studio. There’s another chapter now to the Arlen’s Syndrome story, and Jane has become an actor in that saga in both senses of the word. The whole thing looks like box-office gold.

Jane is not unhappy. If that’s not exactly the same thing as being happy, it seems to do.

The Link is also how I visit with Ethan. He had three broken ribs and a damaged spleen, which seems to be repairing itself without surgery. Youthful spleen can do that. We gaze at each other, and sometimes he’s sullen, and sometimes I’m impatient, and sometimes he sees me shift on my spine in chronic pain. Or maybe he catches a sadness in my eyes. At such times, his expression softens. So does his voice. He’ll ask if I’m okay. When he asks, I am.

Is it wrong to genetically modify human beings? First I thought it was, when I tried to alter Ethan’s FGFR3 gene in utero. Then I thought it wasn’t, seeing both Ethan and the Arlen’s Syndrome kids. Now I don’t know again. There’s still panic out there about The Group’s virus, and the virus is still spreading, and eventually it may – or may not – make enough of society more nurturing. In turn, that may – or may not – change society. If enough people are susceptible. If feelings of compassion actually translate into actions of compassion. If the weather holds and the creek don’t rise and seven or eleven comes up enough on the dice. This is barely Act One, Scene One of whatever comes next. Chaos theory tells us that, in a system of circular feedback, a small change in initial conditions can cause huge and unpredictable changes down the road. Human behavior is a system of circular feedback. Is Ethan more compassionate toward me because he’s growing more oxytorin receptors, or because I’m more open to his (and everyone else’s) compassion? How did the same genemod for empathy produce both Bridget and Belinda?

I have no idea. And to tell the truth, I don’t really care. I’m supposed to care, ethically and pragmatically, but I don’t.

Jane comes into the room and says, “Guess what? The studio is getting Michael Rosen to write the script! Michael Rosen! It’s sure to be terrific!”

I smile back. Michael Rosen is indeed a terrific writer, a creator of sensitive and layered scripts that both challenge audiences and fill seats. He’s also a handsome womanizer, and Jane is looking more beautiful than ever. I know what will happen.

“That’s good,” I say. “Congratulations. The movie’ll be a smash.”

“Thanks to you.” She smiles at me and goes out again.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I turn to my computer and get back to work.

T
ALL GOLDEN DOORS
loomed up behind the dais of the throne. Behind those doors, it was said, the Main Bridge of the Twilight of the Gods reposed, a chamber dim and vast, with many altars studded all with jeweled controls set before the dark mirrors of the Computer. But Acting Captain Weston II found the chamber oppressive, and did not like the mysterious dark mirrors of the Computer watching him, and so, since his father’s death many years ago, this white high chamber before the golden doors was used as his hall of audience.

The chamber was paved in squares of gold and white, with pillars of gold spaced along white walls. Hanging between the pillars were portraits of scenes from somewhere in the ship the Captain had never seen; fields of green plants, some taller than a man, growing, for some reason, along the deck rather than in shelves along the walls. In the pictures, the deck was buckled and broken, rising and falling in round slopes (perhaps due to damage from a Weapon of the Enemy) with major leaks running across it. The scenes took place in some hold or bay larger than any Acting Captain Weston II had seen or could imagine; the overhead bulkhead was painted light blue, some sort of white disruption like steam-clouds floating against it. In many pictures, the blue overhead was ruptured by a large yellow many-rayed circular explosion, perhaps, again, of a Weapon.

In most pictures were sheep or other animals, and young crewmen and women, out of uniform, blissfully ignoring the explosion overhead, and doing nothing to stop the huge leaks, one of which had ducks swimming in it.

Acting Captain Weston II found the pictures soothing, but disturbing. He often wondered if the artist had been trying to show how frail and foolish men are, that they will trip lightly through their little lives without a thought to the explosions and disasters all about them. Perhaps he preferred this chamber for that reason.

What the original use and name of this chamber had been in days gone past, no man of the Captain’s Court could tell, not even his withered and aged Computerman.

The chamber now was bare, except that the Computerman approached the throne and knelt to Weston. “My lord,” he said. His face was worn and haggard, his garb simple, rough, and belted with a hank of rope. The Computerman’s eyes showed red and staring, a certain sign of the many long nightwatches he had spent writhing in the grip of the holy drug, which allowed his brethren to commune with the Computer.