“I’ve been analyzing tissues from dead people for ten years now,” Maria Konig said. “Wendell knows the feeling.”
“I do indeed,” Packer said.
Konig, sitting across from her, was more than just beautiful — she was the perfect model for what Kaye wanted to look like when she reached fifty. Wendell Packer was very handsome, in a lean and compact sort of way — quite the opposite of Mitch. Brock wore a gray coat and black T-shirt, dapper and quiet; he seemed lost in even deeper thought.
“Each day, you get a FedEx box or two or three,” Maria said, “and you open them up, and inside are little tubes or bottles from Bosnia or East Timor or the Congo, and there’s this little sad chunk of skin or bone from one or another victim, usually innocent, and an envelope with copies of records, more tubes, blood samples or cheek swabs from relatives of victims. Day after day after day. It never stops. If these babies are the next step, if they’re better than we are at living on this planet, I can’t wait. We’re in need of a change.”
The small waitress taking their orders stopped writing on her small pad. “You name dead people for UN?” she asked Maria.
Maria looked up at her, embarrassed. “Sometimes.”
“I from Kampuchea, Cambodia, come here fifteen years ago,” she said. “You work on Kampucheans?”
“That was before my time, honey,” Maria said.
“I still very mad,” the woman said. “Mother, father, brother, uncle. Then they let the murderers go without punishing. Very bad men and women.”
The table fell silent as the woman’s large black eyes sparked with memory. Brock leaned forward, clasping his hands and touching his nose with the knuckle of his thumb.
“Very bad now, too. I going to have baby anyway,” the woman said. She touched her stomach and looked at Kaye. “You?”
“Yes,” Kaye said.
“I believe in future,” the woman said. “It got to get better.”
She finished taking their orders and left the table. Merton picked up his chopsticks and fumbled them aimlessly for a few seconds. “I shall have to remember this,” he said, “the next time I feel oppressed.”
“Save it for your book,” Brock said.
“I am writing one,” Merton told them with raised brows. “No surprise. The most important bit of science reporting of our time.”
“I hope you’re having more luck than I am,” Kaye said.
“I’m jammed, absolutely stuck,” Merton said, and pushed up his glasses with the thick end of a chopstick. “But that won’t last. It never has.”
The waitress brought spring rolls, shrimp and bean sprouts and basil leaves wrapped in translucent pancake. Kaye had lost her urge for bland and reassuring oatmeal. Feeling more adventurous, she pinched one of the rolls with her chopsticks and dipped it into a small ceramic bowl of sweet brown sauce. The flavor was extraordinary — she could have lingered on the bite for minutes, picking out every savory molecule. The basil and mint in the roll were almost too intense, and the shrimp tasted rich and crunchy and oceanic.
All her senses sharpened. The large room, though dark and cool, seemed very colorful, very detailed.
“What do they put in these?” she asked, chewing the last bite of her roll.
“They are good,” Merton said.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Maria said apologetically, still feeling the emotion of the waitress’s bit of history.
“We all believe in the future,” Mitch said. “We wouldn’t be here if we were stuck in our own little ruts.”
“We need to figure out what we can say, what our limitations are,” Wendell said. “I can only go so far before I’m outside my expertise and way outside what the department will tolerate, even if I claim to speak for myself alone.”
“Courage, Wendell,” Merton said. “A solid front. Freddie?”
Brock sipped from his foamy glass of pale lager. He looked up with a hangdog expression.
“I cannot believe we are all here, that we have come this far,” he said. “The changes are so close, I am frightened. Do you know what is going to happen when we present our findings?”
“We’re going to get crucified by nearly every scientific journal in the world,” Packer said, and laughed.
“Not Nature ” Merton said. “I’ve laid some groundwork there. Pulled off a journalistic and scientific coup.” He grinned.
“No, please, friends,” Brock said. “Step back a moment and think. We are just past the millennium, and now we are about to learn how we came to be human.” He removed his thick glasses and wiped them with his napkin. His eyes were distant, very round. “In Innsbruck, we have our mummies, caught in the late stages of a change that took place across tens of thousands of years. The woman must have been tough and brave beyond our imagining, but she knew very little. Dr. Lang, you know a great deal, and you proceed anyway. Your courage is perhaps even more wonderful.” He lifted his glass of beer. “The least I can do is offer you a heartfelt toast.”
They all raised their glasses. Kaye felt her stomach flip again, but it was not a bad sensation.
“To Kaye,” Friedrich Brock said. “The next Eve.”
77
Seattle
Kaye sat in the old Buick to stay out of the rain. Mitch walked along the row of cars in the small lot off Roosevelt, searching for the kind she had specified — small, late nineties, Japanese or Volvo, maybe blue or green — and looked up to where she sat curbside, window rolled down for air.
He pulled off his wet felt Stetson and smiled. “How about this beauty?” He pointed to a black Caprice.
“No,” Kaye said emphatically. Mitch loved big old American cars. He felt at home in their roomy interiors. Their trunks could carry tools and slabs of rock. He would have loved to buy a truck, and they had discussed that for a few days. Kaye was not averse to four-wheel-drive, but they had seen nothing she thought they could afford. She wanted a huge reserve in the bank for emergencies. She had set a limit of twelve thousand dollars.
“I’m a kept man,” he said, holding his hat mournfully and bowing his head before the Caprice.
Kaye pointedly ignored that. She had been in an ill humor all morning — had snapped at him twice over breakfast, chastisements that Mitch had accepted with infuriating commiseration. What she wanted was a real argument, to get her blood going, her thoughts moving — to get her body moving. She was sick of the gnawing sensation in her gut that had persisted for three days. She was sick of waiting, of trying to come to grips with what she was carrying.
What Kaye wanted above all else was to lash out at Mitch for agreeing to get her pregnant and start this awful, dragged-out process.
Mitch strode over to the second row and peered at stickers. A woman with an umbrella came down the wooden steps from the small office trailer and conferred with him.
Kaye watched them suspiciously. She hated herself, hated her screwball and chaotic emotions. Nothing she was thinking made any sense.
Mitch pointed to a used Lexus. “Way too expensive,” Kaye murmured to herself, biting her cuticle. Then, “Oh, shit.” She thought she had wet her panties. The trickle continued, but it was not her bladder. She felt between her legs.
“Mitch!” she yelled. He came running, flung open the driver’s-side door, jumped in, started the motor when the first poked fist of blunt pain doubled her over. She nearly slammed her hand against the dash. He pulled her back with one hand. “Oh, God! “she said.
“We’re going,” he said. He peeled out along Roosevelt and turned west on 45th, dodging cars on the overpass and swinging hard left onto the freeway.