eating solids I made a little armada on his plate.”
She delivered three plates just as she described it. “And we’ve never really outgrown it.”
“It’s good for a hard working man.” Folk stuffed an entire flotilla in his mouth and orange pepper juice squirted across the table.
It was a lovely dinner.
Folk did put away the dishes and absconded to his room. Mom and Dad stayed up and shared a coffee.
“I feel like you’re ready to return to engineering don’t you?”
“Did I believe engineering was beautiful?”
“That’s an odd question.”
“Did I?”
“We never talked about it.”
“Am I the man you waited for?”
“Obviously.” She laughed a little and pinched his arm.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“What? Oh, you mean are you the way you used to be. Well, no. But neither am I. You’d been gone six years. Think about it; in that time every one of our cells has died and been reborn. No we’re not the people we were,” with those words she shifted onto her shoulder, eyes fixed on the faux wooden floor.
“Why are they afraid of me? The shufflers I mean. Have you seen how they look at me in the fields?”
“Maybe the accident scared them. Can we not talk?” she rolled back into his arms, nose to nose.
“About before?”
“About anything.”
“Is it a crime to be curious?”
She jolted up and felt her face flush red. “That’s the most I’ve seen of the man I married since- since- since I don’t know when.”
“The only time I’m not filled with fear is when I’m in those fields with Folk.”
“You never liked prying eyes.” She smiled and wiped her nose and eyes and turned down the light.
“What did you think of while I was gone? Did anything ever remind you of me?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t beautiful.”
“What was it?”
The Texas sky was colored like light beaming through rubies and amber laying a shifting and undulating under the swift cumulus clusters in the west. Adrien stands in a barn beside the Right Hand of the Farm.
A weather-beaten hand in a threadbare sleeve clasped the lamb by her neck. “Come along now little one. Each of us, imperfect among creation, shall, in time, lay to rest. Sure as we draw breath, one day the sun will set on those we loved and on those who loved in return. And on that day we shall not be found, save among their memories.” He said in a hollow, base voice.
“Is that the Shepherd?”
The Right Hand said, “That’s the Good Man of the farm.”
"Why did he take the lamb away?"
"The Good Man watches his flock gaze beyond the wire and he knows every sheep will one day test its will against the steel. But he knows if ye chastise for the slightest of transgressions there will be no wool. No nursing mouths. So he suffers the least to reap the most. But the Good Man also knows if a sheep bites it must fall asleep. To suffer that transgression would beget anarchy. Anarchy is the worst Hell a man can endure. Sheep aren't allowed to fight back. And so, out of love, the Good Man does what's right by flock and farm."
“Who may right the Good Man when he errs in his ways?” said she.
In short time, upon a green tuft under a moss covered willow, beyond the farm, sat Adrian upon a woolen cloth. A new sun lit the meadow for lunch. Among the scents of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes there were those who endured, and there were who remembered the lamb.
There were a half-dozen men and women invariably over sixty, a two on oxygen and one with a personal nurse, sitting in an assembly room overlooking the DNA growth acceleration laboratory.
“It’s not a problem. I told you I would be right.” Adrien sat at the head of the table in a chair that felt closer to the ground than her peers.
“Is he willing to return to work?”
“To hell with work is he your husband or isn’t he?” said Dr. M. Dross, the matriarch of the group.
“He is obviously my husband.”
“And so we can say with complete certainty he’ll go off on unapproved immoral and illegal ventures again. The shufflers are right to be afraid.”
“Put him down then?”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong.” Adrien flipped to the papers, “The courts said it’s not the same. Arran Engel’s sentence is considered complete. You can’t execute a man twice for the same crime.”
“He hasn’t succumbed to his nature-yet.”
“And he may not.”
“But, we know what kind of man he is. Why wait?”
“Exactly. We know where this ends. His temperament will get the best of him and the vessel will be in chaos. We can’t take another trial. Not like the Engel trial. And if we don’t the shufflers will do it for us.”
“Sometimes I see things and I don’t recognize the man beside me.”
“First he is now he isn’t. You’re hiding something,” said Dr. Dross.
“I’m not. I want what’s right for him.”
“You mean you want your family. You’re biased and unreliable. We should engage in our own tests.”
“We won’t need too. A flower is replicated because we love the bloom. She assured us we could have nectar without thorns. She failed in the first replication.”
“The first replication?” Adrien approached Doctor Dross, “Are you planning on doing it again?”
Dross folded her hands and sighed, “I know what the problem is. You’re unhappy. It was never about the research. You wanted your husband back. That’s all.”
“That’s not all. But it’s close enough.”
“Is the rest of the answer any of my business?”
“No.”
“If she won’t answer honestly, put him down. That’s my vote.”
Adrien stood and said, “You won’t have to do that. It’s not him. It’s not my husband.”
The crop was half harvested. The Whitney-Schull shifted away from the sun and a golden line glided across the remaining rows of green. Behind the light a great shadow fell across the farmland and stadium lighting sparked to life from the tops of irrigation towers like pale moonlight set aside for those who work the land.
The Flower of Kent rested among the still standing crop. Behind the control panel was a tackboard and affixed to the board were two dozen beetles each painted with the orange strokes and each stroke differing from the previous. Yet each beetle had been captured due to a homogeneous and therefore predictable behavior.
“I think I’m ready to return to work. Maybe when the harvest is complete.” Folk drew in the dirt rather than listen to his father.
“What will we play then?”
“Well, I might not have so much time to play. But we’ll still have dinner and we can do other things.”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens every day.”
The wind blew down on the Flower and nearly shot the tackboard away. A hovercraft descended, Adrien held the controls. “I need to speak to you alone.”
“Your face, are you alright.”
“It’s not about me.” He reached out and she backed away folding her arms. He skin was as gray marble veined with porcelain under the artificial suns. The family felt cool descend as the residual heat faded from the soil up to the imitation sky.
“Where are you taking Dad?”
“You go on home. I’ll be ‘round shortly,” she said.
Even after months the Flower of Kent was unstable and sat crooked and wobbled when the fans simulated wind scattering the mist and insects through the fields. But the explorers didn’t mind the lilting; they never crashed. Folk shook the delicate walls as he entered and took the tackboard down, “I’m going to use this for school.” He turned toward home, “For our first project.”
“Honey,” Adrien stopped him. “Do you want to give Dad one of the bugs? I think it would be nice if yo
u gave him one.”
“Why?”
“Because you found them together, and things like that matter to Dads one day.”
Adrien held Arran’s hand as she led him through the laboratory into the incubation room. The dozen were hidden in the gallery above faces marred by the fluorescent tint of the sapphire-blue halo swaying overhead. There were operating tables placed in odd, temporary positions. And life support systems seemed out of place for an agricultural facility. Arran walked through the light toward a glass-doored cabinet. It was full of medical instruments and embryological research equipment.
“Why did you want to see me here?”
“It’s not about where you were born, but why.”
“What do you mean, what are you talking about?”
“We talked among ourselves when my husband sat in his cell and decided we were smart enough, we were good people. Better than he was. We said it was okay because we had papers. And for that I am sorry.”
The room seemed to warm and Arran broke a quick sweat, beads rolled down his brow and salted his eyes and the room spun. He wiped the sting from his eyes and lost his balance. For a moment he was a pugilist tumbling to the mat, struggling for the ropes. Adrian pulled a fixed leg chair to a white sterile table and guided him down.
“But I remember my whole life.”
“And I can’t explain why. When we took his DNA we assumed we would have to teach him, you, his life. That’s why I told Folk you were, you know. And I’m sorry.”
“What. Who was I?”
“My husband, his name was Arran as well.”
“What happened to, so we’re not married, and you’re not my wife?”
“Legally, yes we are husband and wife. But the honest answer is no. No we’re not.”