When the Wind Blows (19 page)

Afraid of your own shadow, aren’t you, Maximum?

The tall, blond man named Kit was inside the house, talking to someone on a telephone. She worried about who it was. He made
really good spaghetti—the best she’d ever tasted—but that didn’t mean she could trust him with what she knew, with her darkest,
deepest secrets, with the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the School.

Frannie had gone for a walk. She said she’d be back in about ten minutes, maybe sooner. She promised that she was bringing
back a surprise. We’d see about that. And what kind of surprise?

Max knew that not all surprises were good. Understatement of the year! Most of the surprises in her life sucked big time.

She wanted Frannie and Kit to help her, but she had to find out if they were really good people, if they were worthy of her
trust. She definitely liked the fact that they seemed to trust her. That made it easier. Frannie told her that it was okay
to go in and out of the house as she pleased. Frannie seemed real nice and easy to be around. And so did Kit, actually.

The outside door at the School was always locked,
Max remembered. She felt a shiver knife through her body. Bad memories flooded her brain.

She and Matthew had called it the Flight School. Two pretty good reasons. Number one, because the two of them desperately
wanted to fly the hell out of there. Number two, because they were forbidden to fly at the School. So—the Flight School.Aprotest!

She’d been absolutely forbidden to go outside at the School. Under pain of being put to sleep.

But here she was. Awake. Alive. Listening to “Bitch.”

The one time the guards had left a door open—the only time she remembered them ever being sloppy—she and Matthew had bolted.
Flew the coop, as Matthew said, hollered and whooped, actually.

Max tucked her knees up under her chin. She admired how her legs looked in the black stretch pants Frannie had given her.
She also liked the big blue shirt Kit was letting her wear. “
FBI
” was printed on it.

She had a suspicious thought.
The blue shirt covered her wings so that she couldn’t fly.

But it was clean and smelled nice and she didn’t want to fly, anyway. Not right now. She wanted to sit in the creaky old rocking
chair and listen to rock and roll and eat chocolate-chip cookies until they came out of her nose.
God—unlimited cookies. What an idea.

The rock music played and she liked the rhythm. It kind of matched up with her heartbeat. That was the trick of it, wasn’t
it?

She was thinking that if Frannie’s “surprise” was good, maybe she’d tell her one of the secrets about the School.

Just one secret, though.

Maybe about Matthew.

Or maybe she’d tell about Adam? Or start with poor Eve? The terrible, terrible night the two of them were put to sleep.

Maybe Kit and Frannie could help her find Matthew.

Her hands clenched automatically. This was very scary territory. One thing had been drilled into her time and time again.
She could get into terrible trouble if she ever talked.

People could die, starting with her, and then anyone she talked to.

P
IP WAS PULLING ME through the woods as if he were the engine of a miniature runaway train. Cicadas shrilled, close up and
far away. Everything felt like a dream, but it definitely wasn’t one, was it.

“Hold on, fool,” I yelled ahead, but Pip completely ignored me.

I was carrying all kinds of junk on my back: clothes for Max, a little black bag, a 35mm camera—and Pip was intent on being
at the cabin—
now.

The lead finally jerked out of my hands and he was gone, scampering on ahead, dragging rope and chain behind him, yapping
his fool head off.

“Pip! You little snip!”

The girl never had a chance to hear him with those damned earphones on her head. I dropped my pack and ran, but it was too
late. He was all over her. Dear God. Would she know Pip was just a small, overeager dog? That he was nothing to be afraid
of?

Then I could hear her laughing and the small, playful dog’s yipping, and it was just about the neatest sound in the world.
It certainly would do for right now.

Kit came flying out through the front door just as I got to the bottom steps of the cabin. He looked concerned—until he correctly
sized up the situation.

“Is this my surprise?” the girl asked. Meanwhile, the squirming hunk of dog was slobbering all over her.

“Pip, manners,” I said. “Yep, he’s the surprise.”

The girl said, “We have dogs at the School. Bandit and Gomer.”

I glanced at Kit. We filed the tidbit away for later.

“This is Pip,” I said. “He’s a good little pup.”

The girl smiled. “Hello, Pip,” she said.

She picked up a stick and Pip went nuts; backing up, wagging his snippet of a tail, and yapping like the little whirligig
and madman that he is.

The girl looked thoughtful for a moment, then she spoke.

“I’m Max,” she said, telling us her name for the first time. Then she threw the stick. “Go fetch, Pip.”

I
NEEDED TO EXAMINE Max for injuries and possible malnutrition. I couldn’t wait to start. The suspense, the drama, was overwhelming.
Most doctors would kill for this opportunity, and perhaps someone had.

I stood outside the familiar and usually nonthreatening door to the spare room of my house and I took one of the deepest breaths
of my entire breathing career. Kit and I had just been talking about bringing Max to the “authorities,” the local police,
or maybe even to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“I
am
the police,” Kit had argued. He was definitely against the move. “And for the moment, I’m not certain who else we can trust.
I’m working on that, Frannie. Please give me another day or so to check out some things.”

His reaction wasn’t very reassuring, but I had my own misgivings about the local authorities in Nederland, or even Boulder.
I didn’t feel they were quite up to this. I hadn’t from the beginning.

So Max was behind Door Number One, waiting for me to give her a full physical exam. She had already told me it was no big
deal to her—she was used to them.

Well, it was a big deal for me.

I left Kit on the front deck, making calls around the country. He had a couple of notebooks filled with information about
the outlaw group of scientists who might have settled somewhere in the area. He’d already interviewed dozens of doctors who
knew someone in the group. He told me the investigation was like trying to cross the country by way of a network of blind
alleys. He sure wasn’t wearing his million-dollar smile today. He admitted that he was frustrated and nervous about what would
happen now. Neither of us really knew what it was that we were getting into. How could we?

I knocked gently on the door. I heard Max say, “Come in.”

I opened the door and walked in, carrying my black medical bag, trying not to appear as nervous as I was.

Max put down
People
magazine, which she said she read every week, and since we’d discussed the physical exam beforehand, she started to take
off her clothes without my having to ask. I kept wondering
who
had examined her before this?

What I saw now squeezed the breath out of my body. I felt exhilarated, but also more nervous than ever, and afraid. I felt
as if I had suddenly been recruited onto the National Bioethics Committee. This was definitely medical history. This was a
miracle.

The young girl standing before me had no nipples, no vestige of breasts. The massive depth of her chest was incredible. The
drape of her smock when I first saw her and the bulk of Kit’s shirt had disguised a rib cage fully two times as deep as mine.

That was understandable, I was thinking, as I prepared to examine her. Max had to pack an awful lot of musculature into that
chest in order to fly. Also, her flight muscles had to be anchored into something very solid. Perhaps a superheavy breastbone,
or a Y-shaped collarbone. How had this happened? Who had created her—and why? It made me dizzy and weak-kneed.

I moved closer. “Stethoscope,” I said, and she nodded that it was okay with her.

Her shoulders were broad, and her pectoral muscles were anchored to an oversized breastbone called the pectoral crest. Absolutely
extraordinary. As I pressed my stethoscope to her back, or “sternal keel,” she took a deep breath and then released it.

She knew exactly what she was supposed to do. She was accustomed to physical exams. By whom? For what reason? What was the
School all about?

“Is the stethoscope too cold?” I asked Max.

“No,” she said. “Toasty warm.”

She spoke very well for a young girl. Her language could be colorful and descriptive. I’d heard her use both humor and irony.
She was bright. Why? How? Who had taught her to speak? How to act? To be polite and considerate, as she certainly was.

“Would you take another deep breath,” I said. Max nodded. She did as she was asked. She was being very cooperative, and she
was almost always polite. Max was a very sweet young girl.

I couldn’t believe what I heard inside her chest. She didn’t have the billow-type action of mammal lungs. Hers were relatively

small, and from what I could hear, attached to air sacs, both anterior and posterior. What lungs! I could write a book on
her lungs alone. Man, oh man! I was having a little trouble breathing now myself.

I couldn’t be sure, but it followed logically that her bones were hollow, that some air sacs intruded into her bones.

“Thanks, Max. That’s great.”

“It’s okay. I understand. I’m a freak.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“No, you’re just special.”

I turned her to face me and placed my stethoscope over her heart. Jesus. It was at a resting rate of sixty-four beats a minute,
but it was
booming.

Max had the heart of an athlete, a great athlete. The organ was huge. I figured it weighed a couple of pounds. She had the
heart of a good-sized horse.

A large, powerful heart could pump a lot of blood. The connecting chain of air sacs indicated a one-way flow of air. A big
pump and a lot of air surface made for a very efficient means of exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. This was understandable
to me. It made good sense. It would give her the endurance she needed to fly long distances and would also keep her cells
saturated with oxygen at high altitudes, where the atmosphere was thin.

As if she’d read my mind, Max began to beat her wings.

Y
OU HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE,” I said and smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She was such a cool little girl. Relaxed, well mannered,
and funny.

“Millions of times,” Max said.

She lifted a foot off the ground and hovered there.

I stood on a footstool and pressed the stethoscope to her chest again and listened to her heart as it pounded far too fast
for me to count. I stopped listening and looked at her. I marveled at Max. My mind was in the process of being completely
blown away.

“I can get it up to two hundred beats a minute without straining,” she said. Then she winked. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Very cool,” I said. I placed my hands on her hips. “Okay,” I whispered. “That’s enough of this for right now. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Max stopped beating her wings and dropped to the floor. I measured her from head to toe. I was trying to regain my composure.

“Fifty-seven inches,” she piped up.

Right. She was exactly four foot nine. Her arms and legs were slightly disproportionate; the legs were longer. The ring and
pinkie fingers of both hands were partially fused, but it wasn’t noticeable unless you looked closely. There was tiny webbing
between her toes.

These adaptations allowed her to use her hands and feet as a kind of rudder mechanism in lieu of a tail. There was also some
feathering down the back of her legs. That would help in flight, too. Provide more rudder.

Her neck was very flexible. Her reflexes were much, much better than mine—or anybody else’s. Her distance and peripheral vision
were acute. No, they were extraordinary. She was superior in almost every way—the best of humans, the best of birds.

As I’d already suspected, her feathered wings were perfectly jointed. Blindfolded, I’d have thought they belonged to a large
bird that did some serious long-distance soaring; hawks, for instance, or birds that fish the ocean.
Was Max part human, part hawk? How, how, how had this happened?

I put my tape measure to a wing tip and, without my asking, Max spanned her wings.

“One hundred and ten inches,” she said with pride. Her soft voice had a rustling sound, like wind blowing over dried cornstalks.

“Thanks,” I said. “A little over nine feet of wingspan.” Biggest wings I’d ever seen on an eleven-year-old girl.

I asked Max to please lie down on the bed. I palpated her abdominal cavity, got a fix on her organs, which were in the expected
places, but small.

Again, this was logical and understandable. Flight was only possible if the wings could lift the body. So, strong chest muscles,
small organs, and, unless I was way off the mark, her bones would not only be lightweight and hollow but also very strong
in order to cope with the considerable stress of flight.

A perfect design, I thought.

She had been designed, hadn’t she?

“Are you going to give me a pelvic?” Max asked.

She’d been given pelvic exams? I was shocked, but I didn’t allow my discomfort to show.

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Oh. Well, I can tell you, anyway,” she said, putting on her pants. She grinned. “I’m
oviparous.
”

Oviparous, indeed. That explained why Max had no breasts. If reproduction were possible, she wouldn’t be delivering live offspring.
And she wouldn’t be nursing them.

Her babies would hatch from eggs.