But that wouldn’t be as good as learning it from the pribir themselves. Aunt Sajelle had said that the last two pribir visits were forty years apart. God, he wasn’t going to have to wait another twenty-nine years, was he?
“Cord,” Dr. Wilkins said, “are you listening?”
“Yes,” he lied. Across the room, Taneesha made a face at him, her eye still half closed and her lip swollen from the fight. Cord smiled despite himself. She was healing very fast, Emily said. Taneesha would be all right. Everyone would be all right. China and Europe were an unthinkable distance away.
Finally, three and a half years after the drought began, the rains returned. All that spring and summer majestic thunder clouds formed over the high plain, towering black piles that sometimes let down moisture and sometimes didn’t. “Much better than before the warming or the last three years,” Uncle DeWayne said, “but not as good as the best years.”
The following summer, Cord abruptly grew four inches. His voice cracked. He spent a lot of time in the fields, since he didn’t like to ride, and the work turned him strong and, even with precautions against UV, brown. When he looked in the mirror, he frowned. Was that him? “You look wonderful,” his mother said, and he felt himself go hot with embarrassment and pleasure.
The kids all seemed to fly apart that summer. Instead of spending their time together playing Hot Rocks, each of them began to spend more time with adults, working hard. Dr. Wilkins was training Emily in science and genetics. Keith spent more and more time with Uncle Jody and the cattle. Kendra started learning poetry by heart—why would anybody want to do that? Kezia and Roy hung around the hot cookhouse, and Roy learned to make a chili stew that was better than Aunt Sajelle’s or Aunt Carolina’s. He wouldn’t tell anybody what he put into it.
Aunt Hannah had brought an old music cube with her, and her kids played it over and over. Ashley’s favorite song was “Don’t Matter None to Me.” The first time Cord’s mother heard the cube play that song, she froze, a strange look on her face. But the look passed, and Cord forgot about it.
Small biowars went on breaking out over the globe, but Cord didn’t pay much attention. Nobody in New Mexico got sick, and that was all he really cared about.
The pribir did not come.
Later, it seemed to him that the three years between Grandma Theresa’s death and Cord’s fourteenth birthday had passed in one long, unbroken, monotonous, peaceful stretch. Nothing seemed to have happened, even though he could recite events that had. But he walked through them half-conscious, maybe, or encased in some sort of childish membrane. Nothing got through unfiltered, undiluted. Nothing upset his internal chemistry.
In December 2067, Cord and the others turned fourteen.
CHAPTER 21
Cord awoke abruptly, his heart pounding. Second time tonight! He could take care of it in the usual way… but he didn’t want to. He wanted to go outside. Why? He just did. Damn it, did he have to have a reason for everything he did?
Throwing on his clothes, he left the room where Keith, Bobby, and Gavin slept fitfully in their bunks. Jason, Roy, and Dakota had gone on the cattle drive, along with some of the girls, Kendra and Kella and maybe Felicity.
At the thought of girls, the problem got worse.
The night was cool and starry, moonless. An owl hooted in the dark. Cord smelled sage and mint on the fresh breeze. Maddened by the sweetness, he paced restlessly out to the barn, didn’t go inside, paced back. He didn’t want to go in. He headed for the bench under the cottonwood grove by the creek, stumbling and cursing in the dark.
Two figures sat there, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Cord couldn’t tell who they were, not even by straining his eyesight. Suddenly he was ashamed of himself for even trying. Not his business. Only… why would any of the married couples be kissing outside at two in the morning? They could be warm in their beds, touching each other in comfort and…
He ached with envy.
Cord turned toward the smaller houses set up the slope. At Senni’s place, he stopped. Clari was in there. God, to sit with Clari under that tree and do what that couple were doing! He would wake Clari.
He couldn’t wake Clari. She would be upset and if Aunt Senni ever found out… Cord shuddered.
Totally frustrated, he smacked his fist into the side of his head and again started toward the big house. He hadn’t even put shoes on, his feet were freezing, he was the world’s biggest idiot…
Someone stood in the shadows on the porch, a dark figure in a white nightdress. Cord moved cautiously closer. He had to practically walk into her before he could see who it was. Taneesha.
The two stared at each other, inches apart. Cord could hear himself breathing. Finally Taneesha said, “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” His voice came out ragged.
“Cord, I…” She took a step toward him.
Cord couldn’t help himself. As if propelled by some sort of motor, a will-less machine, he reached for her. She lunged toward him with a sort of small hop, and then they were kissing and his hands were on her breasts through her thin nightdress and nothing else existed in the world.
“Where… can we go?” Taneesha breathed when he pulled his mouth away from hers to breathe. “Oh, Cord…”
She was as driven as he was. He gasped, “Wait here a minute,” went back inside and pulled the blankets off his bunk. He thought Gavin opened his eyes but Cord wasn’t sure and he didn’t care.
They took the blankets to the wellhouse and threw them on the floor of hard-packed dirt. It was even colder in here, plus damp; neither noticed. They went at each other with a fierceness beyond control. Not even breaking Taneesha’s hymen, and her brief cry of pain, stopped either one of them. Afterward, they both fell asleep, only to wake sometime in the predawn and do it again.
It wasn’t until he woke for the second time, shivering under the inadequate blanket with Taneesha rumpled beside him, that Cord thought in anguish: Clari.
Sex happened to all of them at once. That was how Cord thought of it: “Sex happened.” Like thunderstorms or earthquakes.
Keith and Loni, Bobby and Maya, Gavin and Susie, Frank and Patty, Bruce and Ashley. Kezia, unpaired, looked angry and desperate. She asked often when the range crew was returning.
It took the adults twenty-four hours to notice what was happening. Work was neglected, couples disappeared, all the kids looked dazed and wobbly. Dr. Wilkins was appalled. “They’re not even using birth control!”
“Then give them some,” Sajelle said wearily. “Scott, you don’t know. They can’t help it.”
“Of course they can help it!” snapped Robin, old and outraged. “They’re not animals!”
“Robin, you weren’t on the ship,” Emily said. “You don’t know. For us the pribir did it with olfactory molecules. For this generation, it’s apparently built in.”
“I don’t believe—”
“I don’t care what you believe, Robin,” Lillie said, and Cord, who overheard this and knew he was not supposed to, was surprised at the rare anger in his mother’s voice. Why?
Keith, Lillie’s son, was having sex with Loni, Mike’s daughter. Was that it? That whole episode with Lillie and Mike under the cottonwood three years ago looked entirely different now. Had his mother and Mike felt like he did with Taneesha? Don’t think about it.
Lillie added, still angry, “Scott, give them some birth control.”
Emily said, “I’m not sure it will do any good. I can run some tests, but the pribir knew their genetics. My guess is that the girls’ Fallopian tubes are designed to counteract any birth control we can manage.”