Normal? This was normal? And how would Jody, living in a crashing world his entire life, know?
She looked again at the Mexican “cousins.” In the house, two babies began to wail simultaneously. Maybe three.
“Okay,” she said, and the girls fell to their knees and kissed her hands, which embarrassed her. She saw a louse crawling on the top of Lupe’s head.
“Get them scrubbed and deloused before they go anywhere near the babies! Also, Scott should check them out for diseases. And, Jody—no more Mexicans. Tell Carolina.”
“I will.”
“None of the triplets are identical,” Scott said, after running days of gene scans. “I guess the pribir wanted as wide a gene pool as possible.”
“Do they all have… are they all…” Theresa asked.
“They all have the same scan as Lillie’s babies. Introns completely excised. Thousands of extra genes.”
“And you still don’t know what any of them do.”
“Not a one. Blood chemistry is completely normal, no unknown proteins. So is urine, tissue samples, everything I can think of to test.” He almost sounded disappointed.
Theresa wasn’t disappointed. There were already rumors in Wenton of odd occurrences at the farm, and on trips to town Theresa had felt the drawing back by people who had known her for fifteen years.
The news from the Net, however, distracted everyone. The United States’s economy might slowly be returning to “normal,” but much of the rest of the world was not. A national news network now operated via ancient satellites. It didn’t go as far as sending actual reporters to China, but it picked up and translated China’s own broadcasts.
“They’re talking about war,” said Sam, who didn’t remember the last one. During that war horrifying bioweapons, some with and some without terminator genes, had been swept by the warming winds around the globe. Some places were still unlivable. Bacteria or viruses lurked in the ground, in the water. No one knew what micros the survivors still harbored in their livers, in their bones, in their blood.
“They can’t,” she said. War. “Not again… they can’t.”
“Do you really believe that?” Scott said grimly.
“Are there any bioweapons even left? In China? Here?”
“Of course there are,” Scott said. “And new ones have probably been invented. Never, in all of history, have hard times prevented war.”
“But why? What do the Chinese want? They don’t even have transport to get here and take over the country after they destroy it!”
“I guess they think they do,” Scott said. “Enough transport, anyway.”
An unspoken arrangement developed in the house. After dark, the people who wanted to hear the news gathered in the “den” around the computer, now upgraded with parts that had only recently appeared for sale in Wenton, part of the town’s growing prosperity. The news listeners were Scott, Jody, Carlo, Senni, Rafe, and Lillie. The others stayed with the children in the great room, asking no questions when grim faces emerged from the den.
One night, however, the faces were not grim. Lillie raced from the den into the great room, where Theresa was changing the diaper on Lillie’s son Cord. “Tess! Come here! DeWayne is on the Net!”
“Who?”
“DeWayne Freeman! From Andrews!”
From Andrews Air Force Base, which for Lillie was eighteen months ago and for Theresa, forty-one years. She barely remembered DeWayne Freeman. “You talk to him, Lillie. I can’t leave Cord. But don’t tell him anything about—”
“I know,” Lillie said. She and Alex talked to DeWayne. A week later DeWayne turned up at the farm, driving a new fuel-celled electric car that immediately brought gawkers streaming out onto the porch. “Wow,” Rafe said. “Look at that!”
A tall, well-dressed black man climbed out of the car. He carried an expensive suitcase. Theresa said quickly, “Everybody go inside. Now. I want to talk to him alone.” She hadn’t heard from DeWayne in forty years; he could be an anti-genetics nut for all she knew.
The family vanished inside. DeWayne climbed the porch steps. “Theresa Romero?”
“Hello, DeWayne.”
“I wouldn’t have known you, Theresa.”
“And I wouldn’t have known you.”
“I want to talk to you. Can we go inside?”
“I don’t think so. I really have a lot to do. Let’s talk out here.” She knew she sounded ungracious, as well as peculiar, but she couldn’t help it.
DeWayne didn’t waste words. “Rafe told me how a bunch of you have gathered here—a bunch of us from the old days. Friends. My wife and children are dead. They… never mind. I don’t have anyone. But I have a lot of credits in the Net, and more each day. I develop Net prosi… what used to be called software. I can do it from anywhere. I’m rich, Theresa, and I’ll share it all with the farm if I can live here with you and the rest.”
Theresa said, “How rich?”
He smiled. “Six billion international credits.”
Theresa sat down on the nearest porch chair, nailed down to keep it from blowing away. Six billion credits. Even with inflation what it had been, that was a fortune. She said bluntly, “Why, DeWayne? With that kind of money, you could buy yourself another wife. Hell, you could buy pretty much anything. Why here?”
“I haven’t ever felt at home anywhere, Theresa. Not since I came out of that trance in a Queens hospital forty-one years ago and learned what I was. And nobody’s been at home with me, either. Andrews was the only time I ever belonged. We’re getting older. I want to settle somewhere.”
Theresa studied him. There were people, she knew, who made their own alienations in life. Maybe DeWayne was one of those. Maybe he’d never belonged because, feeling so different, he never let himself belong. Like, she thought, her throat closing with the old anxiety, like Carlo. DeWayne didn’t look like a man who made emotional revelations easily. Talking to her like this, on her porch long since wind-scoured of any paint, had cost him. Was he telling the truth? Well, Scott and Rafe could check that out on the Net. Could he be trusted? That was a much tougher question.
And then he said, not looking at her, “Rafe said Sajelle is here. And that she isn’t married.”
Oh, God. Damn Rafe! “DeWayne… I have to talk to my sons and daughter about this. Could you come back tomorrow? I’m afraid I can’t let you stay here, but there’s a sort of inn in Wenton… who’s that sitting in your car?”
“Bodyguard. But he won’t be staying. I’ll send him back to the enclave, he—” DeWayne stopped dead.
Sajelle was hurrying up the path from the chicken coop, carrying a basket of fresh eggs clutched against her chest against the wind. Her dreadlocks tossed wildly. Bent over the eggs, she didn’t notice DeWayne until she’d rushed into the comparative shelter of the porch and nearly run into him. Sajelle looked confused to see a stranger, a black man, on the porch. DeWayne hadn’t recognized Theresa right away. Not so now.
He said dazedly, “Sajelle?”
Theresa thought of saying this was Sajelle’s daughter. But Sajelle herself recognized something in his voice or manner. “DeWayne? DeWayne Freeman?”
He seemed unable to speak. Theresa said, “You might as well come in, DeWayne. There are a few little things we’re going to have to explain to you.”
CHAPTER 17
DeWayne stayed, and many things became possible.
In the late spring, Rafe, Emily, and Lillie waylaid Theresa in the barn, pitching hay to the horses. “Tess, we need to talk to you.”