The Only Ones (23 page)

All the ride up river I am checking is she still alive and when we climb off at the Newburgh pier in the early morning she’s still out cold. I have to carry her to the local hybro. I even carry her down the big road where a farmer gives us a lift on his cart, and up the county road where she is just starting to wake up. On the dirt road she is awake enough to lift her head and see the trees over our head.

I go up to the door and press the buzzer. No one replies. Two trucks are parked in front. I try again. I’m worried they are not going to let us in. Like, oh, want to come in? Too bad. I declined to do the work when Ani was so small. We’ll be sleeping in the trailer. If I could even find the trailer.

The vidCom finally comes on, the static goes up, and then a voice.

“Well!” I can tell right off it’s Henry’s voice. “Bro! Come quick. You really want to come and see who’s here.”

iv

It’s a long, long time since we have been here at the Farm.

While I am waiting for the door to open, I count off from Ani’s age how long. Four and a half years. It looked the same. Some old pails were lying in a heap around the Quonset side, like they used to.

“Chee!”

It’s a long time since I heard that sound. I looked up overhead. An Endangered is crossing the morning sky.

“Chee! Chee!”

A breeze blew. Some branches moved in the breeze.

Then the front door opened. And there was Rauden, in a bathrobe. He looked different. He had new glasses. Henry wheeled up behind in a minute. He looked the same.

I don’t know how I looked.

I just stood outside the door, holding Ani half asleep, and they were on the inside, and we all just looked at each other, in the morning, while the Endangered went, “Chee!” further off. And I could hear those things and smell those things you heard and smelled at the Farm.

The orange sofa where I used to sit or sleep was still where it used to be, though more beat up. The chairs are there, and the paneling. Janet Delize showed up in her vehicle soon after, with buns. I guess Henry called her. We all went in the Box Room and ate buns. The Box Room looked the same.

Janet looked the same.

The Box Room even smelled the same.

Ani hid in my neck.

We all just sat there chewing buns. It was so quiet you could hear us chew.

After a while, Henry wheeled his chair beside Ani and me, leaned over where she’s hiding in my neck. He grabbed her hat.

She looked up fast, he put the hat back on her. He wheeled away, and she hid again. Then she peeked up again. He wheeled up again, she hid again. I could hear her, like, giggle. Then he wheeled away, grabbed a bun, put it on a dish and set it on the floor. She peeked up, climbed off me, grabbed the bun, and scooted behind my box. She ate the bun there, on the floor.

When she was scooting, everyone stared so hard, they forgot to even speak. She’s going on six years old and still alive. When they saw her last, she wasn’t even two. Of all of us, she looked most different of all.

Remember she liked to bounce? She didn’t bounce now, she bobbed. She would stand behind me, then bob out. Then she would bob back.

When she bobbed out, everyone stared at her till she bobbed back again.

After an hour or so, she would take a few steps away from me, then come back fast and hide. If she lost sight of me, she got lost.

Her eyes still went pop, like they used to, and they were puffy underneath and red around the rim. But it was cute. The eyebrows still went up, like worried. She didn’t look worried though. They just went up.

The other kind of Puffy, that you wear? She wore one, plaid, and the hat she wore matched the Puffy and had flaps. Alma Cho had left this at our door.

Her hair stuck out on the side of the hat. She was thin and narrow. Five years, ten months old.

Rauden said he was mostly doing DVM work. He would of liked to do more human Projects. He was consulting on some tank Projects. For livestock though.

Larraine died of natural causes. Lucas was in jail. Walter was still alive.

Nobody mentioned Bernie, so I didn’t ask. Henry had made a livestock Chimera called Dookie but it disappeared.

I told them about the garden apartments, and the City Line school that closed, and the other mothers, and the Manhattan Dome.

When we were finished saying all that, no one said anything much. We had more buns.

I really noticed how quiet it was. When I wasn’t here, I thought of the Farm as a place where a lot was happening. Now that I looked at it when no Project was in place, I mean, for most of the time, nothing was happening. If you came here because you wanted to see what would happen, it would be a long wait.

I could hear that wind you hear. I think I heard a cowbell.

Finally Rauden said, “How’s Ani doing?”

I said I didn’t know.

No one said anything.

Henry asked Ani, “Want to ride my chair?” I don’t know why she got on. They rode off down the corridor.

When she was gone, I began to cry. “Something is wrong with her,” I said. Remember the hormones used to make me cry? Since then, I almost never cried. Ani cried. I didn’t cry. Even the worst of Mumbai, I didn’t cry. I’m crying now. Maybe there was still hormones in the air at the Farm. Maybe it’s just how everybody cries up here. I cried five minutes. It could of been ten before I told him, “She has Needs.”

He wasn’t even mad. He just went out of the room and came back. I could smell it on his breath where he had went. “What Needs?”

I said I didn’t know.

This time he went out longer. When he came back I told him it could be Special.

“Ah!” he said. “A Board of Ed thing.”

I agreed.

This time he brought the whole bottle back. “The B of E,” he said. “B of fucking E.” It was great to see Rauden again. I had forgot what he was like. His beard. His booze. But mainly how he just kept talking.

Like, after I told him about the transition Zones, the test on South Brother Island, the Sunnyside Center, the Manhattan Center, the other Manhattan Center, he said, “The B of E. The goddamn B of fucking E,” and even banged his fist on his desk, like he used to. “I mean! The city’s a goddamn wasteland. Even with whatever so-called infrastructure improvements they’re bringing to poor goddamn Queens, it was a total mess even before Mumbai—population wipeout, neighborhoods burned to the ground. And with all that, the goddamn B of E is going to drag you through so much red tape you’re going to wish they goddamn burned down too! I mean, talk about fucking hardy! Dewey Sylvain was barking up the wrong goddamn tree. For hardy fucking bullshit, the B of f E’s red fucking tape makes a Sylvain hardy look like a goddamn wuss.” Then he went out again and when he came back his hair and beard was soaking wet, the way it was when he put his head under the tap the first day I was ever here, so long ago.

We were all pretty quiet for the rest of the day, even Rauden. We ate beans and watched TV. I noticed Rauden gave Ani a lot of looks though. Everyone did. Janet, Henry, Rauden. Rauden watched me too sometimes. Everyone else just watched her. They wanted to be sure she’s still alive. She’s still alive. She did get lost twice, in the Box Room. Everyone noticed that.

Rauden said we should stay for a while, now we made the trip. They would put us in our old room, with the gate. Rauden was sleeping on a cot in one of the old lab rooms. I don’t know if Sook threw him out, or what. I didn’t ask. Our old room was a mess. There are plastic tubs, 10-gallon tins, a lot of plastic garbage bags. They put a TV in, for Ani. They brought some new covers for the cots and had a picture on the wall of a cow. They put a lot of things in. We were going to have to stick around for a while to figure out what to do about the B of E.

Henry said he could hack the Special Needs out of her file, but stick the swipe in any B of E scanner, it’s going to pop back in again.

It was interesting, how it worked for Ani. Like, Henry gained her trust. Even Janet Delize gained her trust. She took her out to see a cage of Endangereds. And Janet was nice to Ani. She was not nice to me. And that is one more proof, you know.

I even think Ani enjoyed the Farm. She enjoyed the toilet, and the faucet taps. She enjoyed the big TV. She said, “Hey Krazy Durg,” and watched for three hours. Hey Krazy Durg was a TV Character she enjoyed. Henry liked it too. He had a gizmo, it could run a Program backward. She thought it was really funny. So one day after he run Hey Krazy Durg backward, she showed him how she walked backward. Then she walked forward. Then she walked backward. She did it really fast. She did it down the hall too, all the way to the green light, then all the way to Lab 3 and back to the sofa in front. When she saw me watching her, she stopped. Rauden saw it first, though.

I told him, “She’s not the only one. There are others. She picked it up from them.”

It’s funny, when I saw her do it back home, I took it really hard. When Rauden thought something was wrong with it, I had excuses. “She’s not the only one who gets lost! She’s not the only one who cannot tie her shoes or sit in chairs!”

It did seem to bother Rauden though. He said we ought to get her tested. She could have some anomaly.

I said no. I didn’t want her to be tested any more. She already had all the tests she will need for her whole life. I wanted her to be different from me. I was tested all the time. That was what Subjects did. I don’t want her to be a Subject. I want her to be like anyone.

Oh, man. I’m crying again.

Rauden just waited till I’m done. Then he said anyone could take a test.

I shook my head. If she tests wrong, they might take her away.

I could see Rauden thinking about that, like, maybe they would. He went to his screen for a long time punching keys and when he came back out, he said he had a tester in mind who won’t take her away. This guy won’t even tell anyone, no matter what he finds.

The tester’s name was Suresh, and it took a week to get him down from Ithaca. He was very nice. He was like a nurse, except he looked, I don’t know, soft. He had wet eyes. He asked Ani, “Do you have a special way of walking?”

So Ani nodded hard and got up. But she just walked the regular way.

So Suresh waited awhile, then said, “Very good.” Then he said, “Do you have a regular way of walking?”

So Ani nodded hard. But she just walked the regular way again.

Suresh said, “Very good.”

Everything she did, he said, “Very good.” Which Ani enjoyed. She began to think she was very good. Every time Suresh came down from Ithaca, she walked the regular way and said, see my special way of walking. Forward, backward—she didn’t know the difference. She didn’t walk backward again the whole time we were there.

If Rauden hadn’t seen it, maybe we could of gotten away with it.

Anyhow, I guess Suresh found other, you know, anomalies, because he determined, she might have Special Needs. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant in her case. It could mean what they call LD. It could even just mean City Line kid.

The good part was, this is some sort of hard Proof, she was not me. I didn’t have Special Needs. That I heard.

The bad part was, if Rauden plans to market any other viables, this is not exactly going to help sales. It’s true she survived Mumbai but she cannot tie her shoes or sit in chairs or find her way out of a room. So that could be a problem. What kind of price could he get for a child with Needs like that, hardy or not? Between you and me, I thought why not find a country where they go barefoot and sit on the ground and maybe don’t even have rooms for her to find her way out of, but I suppose they also would not pay the best rates, so I kept this to myself.

And I mean, nobody said this to me but I got the idea Ani’s Special Needs are not all that great even for her.

Henry thought maybe he could invent a special block to keep the thing out of Ani’s ID, but Suresh thought, do not be hasty. If things still worked the way he heard they used to, she can use this to her advantage. It can give her access to Special Resources she might not be able to access another way. That is, if things still worked that way. None of them really knew how any of this stuff worked now or if it even did. Rauden wasn’t even sure where the whole B of E came from now. He thought it could be some anomaly in the system that kept turning out Resource, funds, rules, whatever, even if no one was at the other end.

But Suresh said, well whatever was true now, it is always true that you have to what they call work the system, to get the Resource. Well to get anything in the B of E. Needs was as good a way as any to do that.

And everyone agreed but me. I said no. No. “I want her to be a regular kid. I want her to go to school with regular kids.”

Suresh went back to Ithaca. Rauden drove him to the Terminal.

When he came back, Ani was asleep in our room. Rauden sat down with me on the orange sofa and said, “I, a lot of things can go wrong with a child. Even regular kids sometimes have problems. This Mill Rock thing might work for her. It might help her.”

I just hung tough. No, no, no. I did not want to call attention. They might find out what is really wrong with her.

Rauden didn’t say anything more about it. He just went and did some Box Room work. So I’m heading for bed later but saw him standing by the freezers where the viables are stored. He had his hand up on one freezer door. I don’t know who they were, and if they were ever born.

But whoever they were, or were going to be, Rauden had his hand over their freezers and really looked sad. I got the idea he is thinking, what is the goddamn point? We always thought these will be very special kids but not this way. If they are just going to walk backward or get lost or cannot tie their shoes or sit in goddamn chairs, hardy or not, why should they even be born?

Well, I want to say something about those viables, or some of them. They are the reasons they were born.

Because, look, if something is wrong with Ani, Rauden’s not going to kill her. It’s ok Ani was born, because she is. But they’re not. If it’s not ok for them to be born, they won’t.

But if it’s not ok for them to be born, and they’re so similar to Ani—this is what I’m saying. Then it’s not really ok for
her.
Even if she is. Born.