“Well, I can see why.”
Kaye deliberately switched her thoughts, a survival tactic at which she had become adept in the last decade. “I'm flying out to California to meet with Mitch. He's still searching for Stella.”
“Any signs?” Freedman asked.
“Not yet,” Kaye said.
She got up and Freedman held up a special disposal basket marked “Biohazard” to receive her tear-dampened tissue. “Carla might behave very differently tomorrow. She'll probably tell me how glad she is you dropped by. She's just that way.”
“I understand,” Kaye said.
“No, you don't,” Freedman said.
Kaye was in no mood. “Yes, I do,” she said firmly.
Freedman studied her for a moment, then gave in with a shrug. “Pardon my bad attitude,” she explained. “It's become an epidemic around here.”
Kaye boarded a plane in Baltimore within two hours, heading for California, denying the sun its chance to rest. Scents of ice and coffee and orange juice wafted from a beverage cart being pushed down the aisle. As she sat watching a news report on the federal trials of former Emergency Action officials, she clamped her teeth to keep them from chattering. She was not cold; she was afraid.
Nearly all of her life, Kaye had believed that understanding biology, the way life worked, would lead to understanding herself, to enlightenment. Knowing how life worked would explain it alclass="underline" origins, ends, and everything in between. But the deeper she dug and the more she understood, the less satisfying it seemed, all clever mechanism; wonders, no doubt, enough to mesmerize her for a thousand lifetimes, but really nothing more than an infinitely devious shell.
The shell brought birth and consciousness, but the price was the push-pull of cooperation and competition, partnership and betrayal, success causing another's pain and failure causing your own pain and death, life preying upon life, dragging down victim after victim. Vast slaughters leading to adaptation and more cleverness, temporary advantage; a never-ending process.
Viruses contributed to both birth and disease: genes traveling and talking to each other, speaking the memories and planning the changes, all the marvels and all the failures, but never escaping the push-pull. Nature is a bitch goddess.
The sun came through the window opposite and fell brilliant on her face. She closed her eyes. I should have told Carla what happened to me. Why didn't I tell her?
Because it's been three years. Fruitless, painful years. And now this.
Carla Rhine had given up on God. Kaye wondered if she had as well.
2
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
Mitch adjusted his tie in the old, patchy mirror in the dingy motel room. His face looked comical in the reflection, tinted yellow around his left eye, spotted black near his right cheek, a crack separating neck and chin. The mirror told him he was old and worn out and coming apart, but he smiled anyway. He would be seeing his wife for the first time in two weeks, and he was looking forward to spending time alone with her. He did not care about his appearance because he knew Kaye did not care much, either. So he wore the suit, because all his other clothes were dirty and he had not had time to take them down to the little outbuilding and plug dollar coins into the washing machine.
The rumpled queen-sized bed was scattered with half-folded maps and charts and pieces of paper with phone numbers and addresses, an imposing pile of clues that so far had gotten him nowhere. In the last three years of searching across the state, and finally zeroing in on Lone Pine, it seemed no one had seen Stella, no one had seen any youngsters traveling, and most certainly no one had seen any virus children playing hooky from school.
Stella had vanished.
Mitch could locate with stunning insight a cluster of men who had died twenty thousand years ago, but he could not find his seventeen-year-old daughter.
He pinched the tie higher and grimaced, then turned out the bathroom light and went to the door. Just as he opened the door, a young-looking man in a sweatshirt and gray windbreaker, with long blond hair, pulled back a knocking fist.
“Sorry,” the man said. “Are you Mitch?”
“Can I help you?”
“The manager says maybe Ican help you.” He tapped his nose and winked.
“What's that mean?”
“You don't remember me?”
“No,” Mitch said, impatient.
“I deliver hardware and electrical supplies. I can't smell a thing, never have, and I can't taste much, either. They call it anosmia. I don't like the taste of food much, and that's why I stay skinny.”
Mitch shrugged, still at a loss.
“You're looking for a girl, right? A Shevite?”
Mitch had never heard that word before. The sound of it—a rightsound—gave him gooseflesh. He reappraised the thin young man. There wassomething familiar about him.
“I'm the only one my boss, Ralph, will send to deliver supplies, because all the other guys come back confused.” He tapped his nose again. “Not me. They can't make me forget to pick up the money. So they pay us, and since I treat them with respect, they pay well, with bonuses. See?”
Mitch nodded. “I'm listening.”
“I like them,” the young man said. “They're good folks, and I don't want anybody to go up there and make trouble. I mean, what they do is sort of legal now, and it's a big business around here.” He peered off into the bright morning sunshine heating up the small asphalt parking lot, the grassy field, and the scattered pines beyond.
“I'm interested in any information,” Mitch said, stepping out onto the porch, careful now not to spook the man. “She's my daughter. My wife and I have been looking for her for three years.”
“Cool,” the man said, shuffling his feet. “I have a little girl myself. I mean, she's with her mother, and we're not married—” He suddenly looked alarmed. “I don't mean she's a virus kid, no, not at all!”
“It's okay,” Mitch said. “I'm not prejudiced.”
The man looked strangely at Mitch. “Don't you recognize me? I mean, okay, it's been a long time. I thought I remembered you, and now that I see you, it's all as clear as yesterday. Strange, how people come back together, isn't it?”
Mitch made little motions of shoulder and head to show he still wasn't clued in.
“Well, it might not have been you . . . but I'm pretty sure it was, because I saw your wife's picture in the paper a few months later. She's a famous scientist, isn't she?”
“She is,” Mitch said. “Look, I'm sorry . . .”
“You picked up some hitchhikers a long time ago. Two girls and a guy. That was me, the guy.” He pointed a skinny finger at his own chest. “One of the girls had just lost a baby. They were called Delia and Jayce.”
Mitch's face slowly went blank, with both astonishment and memory. He was surprised, but he remembered almost everything, perhaps because it had taken place in another small motel.
“Morgan?”he asked, stooping as if his arms were dragged down by weights.
The man broke into the broadest grin Mitch had seen in months. “Bless you,” Morgan said. There were actually tears in his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, shuffling his feet and backing off into the sunshine. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “It's just, after all these years . . . I'm sorry. I'm acting stupid. I am really grateful to you guys.”
Mitch reached out to save Morgan from falling off the curb. He pulled Morgan gently back into the shadow, and then, spontaneously, two men who had been through a lot over the years, they hugged. Mitch laughed despite himself. “Goddamnit, Morgan, how are you?”
Morgan accepted the hug but not the profanity. “Hey,” he said. “I'm with Jesus now.”
“Sorry,” Mitch said. “Where's my daughter? What can you tell me? I mean, sounds like you've run into a group of people who don't want to be found.” He felt the questions lining up, refusing to be slowed, much less stopped. “SHEVA people. Shevites, is that what you called them? How many? A commune? How did you find out I was looking for my daughter?”