“Fine, let’s talk about all the choices you’ve made. You think you’re this man of culture, you sit here in your big house on a cliff, and you look down and complain. And you chose to make your son athletic and your daughter beautiful, but you did nothing to prevent one from being stupid and the other from being a coward and a snob, because that takes more than good genes. And you’ve never been sick a day in your life, but just what kind of drugs made you all your cash?”
There were moments of silence, and then the older man said, “I make drugs that relieve pain for people who are dying of painful diseases, like the pox. And I make a drug that they can use to kill themselves if they want a little dignity in their last moments.”
I kept my jaw square.
He said, “I know you wanted someone you could look up to. I’ve done what I can with myself. If Sam’s not so bright, maybe it’s because I’m not so bright. If Amy’s a coward and a snob, maybe it’s because I’m a coward and a snob.” He smiled and lifted his hands. “Have hope, Nelson. Not everything can be engineered.”
* * * *
I got out into the moonlight and the fresh sea salt air. I was at the bottom of the cliff on which the house sat, walking along the thin strip of beach between the rock face and the water. I looked to the ocean and I saw a figure out there. I saw a shape appearing on the water and disappearing again, and then I saw the shape rise out of the water and approach the shore. It move towards me, and as it moved it swayed first to the right and then to the left.
I first saw her blond hair, which like the ocean carried thin waves made silver by the moon. And then I saw her face, which was wet and shining. She fixed her eyes on me and smirked at me.
I said, “You went for a swim?”
Amy said, “I’m not dressed for the occasion?”
I shook my head. “You’ve forgotten to dress at all. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Welcome to the 2030’s. Don’t be so modest. Come on and walk with me. In this light, I can’t see you blush. Now you see that I’m neither a coward nor a snob.”
“If you’re so daring, why not walk naked in the day light?”
She stopped, and she dragged my hand to her. “You’re staying the night?”
I snatched my hand back and went away. She came running after me.
“Slow down.” Said Amy. “I heard you. You gave my Dad a hard time. Now, look at you. I’ve given you no reason to dislike me. You hardly know me.”
“You got it.” I had started up the stone steps that climb the cliff side.
“Come off it. Any normal boy wouldn’t act like this. It’s not like we’re getting married. I just want to know what it’s like. Come on.” She tried to drag me back down the steps. “I want to do it in the sand. Come on. You think you’ve got principles – so who’s the snob and the coward now?”
Sam came bounding down the steps. He was still far away when he said, “What were you yelling about in there?” When he came close enough to see us, he stopped short. He took a second glance at his sister, but jerked his face back to me. “What the hell are you doing?”
Amy spoke up. “I was going for a swim. What are you doing?”
“I heard some yelling. It was that other kid.”
“Nelson? You’re looking at him. Ask him about it, you retard.”
Sam’s big fingers tapped the stone railing. He inched up the steps backwards. Even in so little light, I knew what the expression on his face meant. He would’ve killed me, if he could. But instead, he turned around and went back up the stairs, and we all walked up there in silence.
* * * *
I rode the train back to campus. As I entered the train, I saw a tiny woman struggling to put her bag on the top rack. Her lumpy mass filled the isle and held everyone up. All the waiting people were huffing, but otherwise silent. Two boys sat in the seat next to where the woman stood. Given their size, they could have been my own age, but to me their faces looked young and unusual. I tried not to stare at them, but it was difficult. I realized that I didn’t stare at them because they were strange, but because they were familiar. They were like a song that I had heard a long time ago; one that I knew but couldn’t name.
Their faces were long, and their tongues rolled out. Their cheeks were chubby and they were opening and closing their mouths like fish. Their eyes rolled about but looked at nothing in particular.
The woman dropped her bag, and when she bent over to get it, she made a small space through which a person could step. Several did so, excusing themselves as they went. I followed the line and came up to the woman and the two boys.
I said, “Let me help you.”
The woman shot upright. “Oh no, I didn’t mean to drop it!”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter if you meant to.” I put my hands on the bag.
“Please. Don’t you think I can get it myself? I got this far just fine. I don’t need your help.”
I moved on and found my seat. From there I saw the woman launch the bag into the rack and drop herself into her seat. She put a tender hand into the straw hair on the boy next to her. She ruffled the hair and it stood up on end. This made her smile.
I leaned back and closed my eyes. Then a man tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, you dropped this.” He was holding a piece of paper. I took it and I saw that it was a note Sam’s Dad had put in my pocket. It said, “This is my secret.
“You may know that I sit on the Medical Engineering Board. There’s been a lot of talk about the genetic construction process, and about how it is flawed in ways the early engineers could not have foreseen. Imagine a hole in the ground not wider than a dime. You couldn’t be blamed for thinking it a small hole. But what if I told you it was a mile deep? It becomes a big hole. There’s a big hole like that in all of our people, and it makes our genetic material unstable. With each generation the hole gets deeper but no more noticeable. And then it will cut one generation through and through. That generation is yours, and it is your graduating class that will fall apart. They will grow old in their youth. They will die of allergies to everything they eat, and some will starve themselves to death. Each and every one will go slowly insane. But maybe you won’t, Nelson. That’s always been my hope.”
And that was the end of it. What did he know? Not the half of it. I’m a goddamned Monte Carlo. So let everyone else know what it feels like. I crumpled the paper into the smallest ball I could make of it, and went to sleep.
* * * *
The train stopped at my station. Because the train was full and many people were leaving at this stop, they were all out of their seats before the train slowed and they were inching to the doors. No one wanted to get caught in the press of people. I slipped through the crowd and found myself in front of a door. In the corner of one eye I saw the woman with the two boys trying to stand and drag her bag off the rack. It slid off and into the crowd of people and scattered them.
She bent down and unzipped the bag.
I don’t know if I made a noise as I ran, but when the doors opened I worked to beat my feet on the ground and put distance between the train and me. Maybe no one else back there understood, but I was smarter and faster than they were, and I always had been.
I had never heard an explosion before, and I don’t know if I really heard that one. What I remember is the hail of hot wind that rushed behind me and knocked me down. I slid across the shiny black floor and slammed into a cart full of snack foods. I twisted my head and saw pieces of the people that had been with me on the train. Parts flew everywhere. Arms and fingers soared into the snack stand and fell down on me. The plastic bags of food were sticky with blood.
I pushed myself to my feet, and I turned. There was plenty of skin strewn across the ground, but no whole bodies. There was blackness burnt onto the platform and the steel rafters. There were holes where the signs and signal lights had been – and shards of blasted metal and shattered glass. There was the hull of my train – opened to the sky like the leaves of a flower
, and flames like brilliant orange petals leaping out of it. And smoke like nothing I’d ever seen devouring everything around it.
The smoke came up on me and jammed into my nostrils and eyes, and I blacked out and fell back to the ground.
* * * *
Whup, Whup. Whup, Whup. It was raining and dark out. I was laying face up in the back seat of a car. In one ear I heard the sound of the water splashing on the car window in spurts, and in the other I heard the wipers swinging back and forth. Whup, whup. The droplets on the windows blurred the colors of traffic lights and cop flashers and neon lottery signs. Somehow I knew I had gone to someplace from where I couldn’t really return.
I tried to sit up, but then I heard a familiar voice say, “Nelson, keep down.”
“Amy?”
She didn’t say anything. I thought it was Amy’s voice. My head hurt badly. Inside it I saw pictures of severed legs and heads and long strips of bloodied torn clothing. I said her name again. All I heard was another familiar voice saying “Shut up. Amy, it was stupid to bring him with us.”
I said, “Doctor Kane?”
Amy said, “Did you want to leave him there to die?”
“That was the point.” Said Kane.
“Isn’t it enough for you that he’s the only one that survived? Besides, he might help us.”
“Might. Whatever; don’t be stupid. He’s dangerous. And it’s dangerous to have him.”
“Be a man, Doc. Stand up on your own for once.”
A glowing golden head reached over me in the darkness. Amy smiled at me. Of all the people in all the world. Doc was right. Let me die.
Amy said, “Welcome to the under ground, Nelson. The cops are looking for us.”
I said, “Have you got the barber too? What have you got for me?”
There was silence, and then Amy’s face disappeared and she was arguing with Kane. At last the man consented and said to me, “You might want to know - this guy I told you about how could give and take disease- he was very interested to know that you were alive.”
“He made me?”
“He said it was more than that, but he wouldn’t tell me. And I didn’t ask. What he would say is that now he knew how to fix you so you could live.”
“You’re gonna take me there?”
“I can’t anymore. He’s gone. And don’t ask me where.”
“Then where are we going?”
The rain stopped, and Kane turned off the wipers. There were no lights outside now; we had gone inside something. The car stopped and I heard a clank and the floor shook. A giant freight elevator was taking us down below the street. After the elevator settled and the car rolled out and stopped again, Kane and Amy left me. I heard Kane’s stick tapping on concrete and making an echo in some large hollow space. I heard Amy arguing again, this time with several other people. Then Kane pulled open the door and told me to get out. So I did.
I stood there with Amy and Kane, and in the center of a band of men and women that circled the car. There were some lights above us, but darkness outside the circle. Kane looked as he had the last time I’d seen him, but now Amy was wearing dark green coveralls. She had decided to hide her figure this time. And She had an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. The folks in the circle were dressed like that too, only most of them also carried nine-millimeter side arms and a few carried rocket guns. Not a single one of them had yellow rims in the eyes.
Like I always said, I was smarter than most. While others puzzled over what had already happened, I could see what was coming down the pipe. I now understood that the war had begun.
There were two men standing near Amy and Kane and me. One of them wore a face pot marked by a hundred craters. A couple bled like razor nicks. That was the face of the monkey pox. The other man was tall and smooth faced. He reached out a gloved hand and caressed Amy’s cheek. That gave me a weird feeling. Then he walked up to me. He seemed to like how his combat boots boomed in the big open space.
He was talking to Amy as he looked me over. “Why did you bring him here?”
Amy said, “We made sure he couldn’t see where we were going. He was out most of the time.”
“He’s a piss eye.”
“Like me? What if he wanted to help us? He’s a Monte.”
The man looked back at her. I had to wonder how Amy knew about that. No one knew about that. But I had bigger problems. I think that maybe Amy really did like me. And maybe she liked me better than this other guy, and he was already starting to figure that out.
I said, “I never asked for anything.”
A rifle butt hit my face and I hit the ground. I watched my blood spill from my mouth. I could take this guy. I could summon Mr. Hyde, and then this make-believe soldier would look like the people he blew up on the train. But his friends stood all around us. I wasn’t exactly bullet proof. So I stayed put.
He said, “Around here you’re not the boss.” He sounded like he’d had about enough of my type. Then he helped me stand, and he said, “She’s right. If you’re a Monte, you’re closer to us than to them. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you decide if you want to be on our side, or if you’d like to die with your own kind. If it’s the latter, I’ll erase the memories of what you will see down here.”
Then he smiled a little and raised his palms. “I’m the commander of this revolt. In the next few days, you’re going to see a lot of me, whether in person or on TV. Folks are going to think I’m some kind of cold blooded killer. At least you’ll know I’m just an average Joe they pushed a little too far.”
* * * *
I woke up in my bed at Adams School. I guessed that I hadn’t accepted commander monkey’s offer. I remembered nothing from between those last words that he said to me and now, but I knew one thing – I had to get out. Now. As I rolled out of bed, I stood and stopped. Another thought hit me; maybe some memory that hadn’t gone away: Amy’s dead. Was that true? What had gone on down there?
And then another little thought floated about, attached to nothing. Amy had killed my sister.
* * * *
I stood up in my dark room. I heard a sound. Thump, thump. It was the sound of heavy boots struck against a wooden floor. There were men talking outside, below my window. I stuck my head out, and I looked down on the porch that wound its way around the dorm. There was a big man down there, and he was dressed in black and wore a helmet and had slung a machine gun under one arm. A police badge sparkled in the light of lamps that dotted the campus. He approached two other figures like himself and they all talked in low voices that I couldn’t hear.
I had to get out. The terror was on its way, and the school was its next target.
I felt a pain in my arm as I stood at the window, and I pulled my sleeve back. I saw wounds that crept up to my shoulder. I winced as I moved my arm back, as I felt the sting ride up my back. With the pain came memories rushing into my head…
* * * *
I told the commander to let me out, and the bastard had a dozen of his people hold me down and beat me. And there was the sound of a woman screaming, screaming like she’d caught on fire. But I couldn’t see anything.
The commander said, “I’ll let you go, but it will do you no good. We’re coming to burn you down.”
They were going to let me go home before they killed me in my bed. And they were going to kill Amy’s brother. She wasn’t screaming just for me, but for Sam. And they were testing her. She failed. Who knew how she’d joined this lot, but after her performance that night, the commander was convinced that she was still one of us. So he turned from me and knocked her to the floor.
* * * *
That’s all I remembered then. I looked from my window into the town that lay beyond the Adams campus. The lights were still. The commander hadn’t arrived yet. The cops below me were smoking and chatting, as if they believed the directors were paranoid for bringing them here. It seems the directors had heard about the train bomb and had figured it was the work of some terrorist group w
ith something against us. They were right, and they weren’t paranoid, but it wouldn’t do them any good . The commander’s people had been on the school grounds long enough to put me in my bed.
They just wanted to show me they could do it. Anytime.
I turned and grabbed my bag. It still had all my stuff. At least they let me keep my stuff. I zipped it up and I went to the door, and I reached for the door handle and I doubled over. Was it new pain coming back to me again, or was it more memories? Two jabs came at once, the one a loud ringing in my ears, and the other something that felt like a crab digging its way out of my stomach. And new images rushed into my head.
* * * *
I was on the ground, but now I was laying face up to the glare of the lights. Kane held me there with his stick. It had a point on the end, and he turned it back and forth in my flesh. Then they dragged me to my feet and tossed me in a small room. I splashed down in a puddle of stinking water that covered the floor. Soft greasy scum floated on its surface. A little later, there was a flopping sound in the darkness, and a billow of air rushing past my face, followed by another splash. Then I heard the metal door swinging shut. Amy lay with me there in the darkness. Her hair was all over her face, and a little light from the crack above the door reflected in her delicate curls. Her clothes were torn and she was covered in mud. The commander had been beating her, and maybe he’d done other things to.
She spat. “It was a test, Nelson. Willy had nothing on you, he told me to bring you here so he could test me.”
“Your boyfriend?” I said.
She swatted a hand at me, and the tips of her broken nails caught my face.
* * * *
I stood at my bedroom door and felt the scratches on my cheek. A bit of Amy’s painted nail fell into my palm. They had beaten her because she cried when they beat me, and when they said they were going to burn the school down. They laughed when they found out she loved Sam. She had thought Willy was her lover, all right. That’s why she scratched me. That illusion was over now, and all the other tricks she’d played too. She’d told me how she’d left college and thrown her hand in with the terrorists. I had already figured out most of that by the time they’d dragged me from the car. By then, all her words from before had made sense.