A foolish hope welled up in Els. She was always so wise. The windows were fogging up. Maddy painted idle petroglyphs on the passenger-side glass.
Modified bacteria? Phht. You can’t even microwave a bowl of tomato soup.
No, Els said. I did that.
She shook her head. Impossible.
Any intelligent college kid—
Oh, Peter. I don’t believe this. Her hand snaked out, fending off the fact. They were seventy years old. They’d been divorced for a third of a century. But here they were, fighting on their first date.
Have they charged me with anything specific?
The hand came back down over her eyes and massaged her forehead. Lordy. And I thought you were naïve at twenty-five.
You thought I. .? You were the wild idealist.
She looked out the window, at a different past. On the sidewalk in front of the burnished brass and black granite entrance, three women riding Segways handed out red, white, and blue tote bags. Half a dozen children dressed as boarding school wizards trotted into the mall, late for some arcane experiment. Maddy shook her head.
And you’re the biggest threat to national security since that propane-filled Pathfinder in Times Square.
He started to cackle. Maddy turned to him, and the fear in her face fed his laughter. His eyes watered at his absurdity, and he couldn’t stop. She put a hand on his knee. The shock of her touch sobered him. He raised his arm and caught his breath.
Sorry. It’s the stress. Losing it.
She tugged on his trouser crease. Come on. Let’s get some food into you.
A carousel spun in the center of the food court, a swirl of colored lights, mirrors, and a calliope. At one end of a large ellipse of food stalls, four bulky men clad in denim and sweatshirts played guitars and sang into mics, songs to listen to while driving across desiccated places in trucks very high off the ground. At the other end, a chorus line of child wizards were getting gunned down one by one by the voice vote of a merciless crowd.
With awful ease, Maddy secured two slices of pizza and a pair of fizzy drinks. They sat across from each other at a red molded table that would still be around long after the race had cooked itself to death. Four dozen people ate at nearby tables. A few hundred drifted around the ring of franchises. Most of them had seen his picture all week long. But none noticed him.
From across the table, he looked at the woman who had driven to Boston with him in a seventeen-foot rental truck, while carrying his child. A minute of gazing, and it seemed she’d had crow’s-feet and paper skin and liver spots for as long as he’d known her.
So how much trouble would you say I’m in?
Maddy considered the question from a vantage far away. Oh, they want to put you in jail for a very long time. You’re the perfect bogeyman.
Graves, her placid features seemed to say, were just the thing for dancing on.
People are buying gas masks. Purification pills. You’re the toast of the Internet.
Yes, he said. Finally famous.
She flipped a piece of melted cheese back onto her slice and squinted at it, a horoscope. So you really did this thing.
What thing?
Genetic whatever.
Yes.
You modified the DNA of a living thing?
He shrugged. Hundreds of companies do that every day.
Why, Peter? What ever possessed you?
A tune he couldn’t name issued from the twanging guitars of the old men in denim on the soundstage.
It’s astonishing, he said.
What is?
The things that happen down there.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
He couldn’t begin to tell her. Life. Four billion years of chance had written a score of inconceivable intricacy into every living cell. And every cell was a variation on that same first theme, splitting and copying itself without end through the world. All those sequences, gigabits long, were just waiting to be auditioned, transcribed, arranged, tinkered with, added to by the same brains that those scores assembled. A person could work in such a medium — wild forms and fresh sonorities. Tunes for forever, for no one.
He pleaded with her, palms bared.
Not you, Peter. You’re doctoring toxic organisms?
More throbbing counterpoint poured out of the PA system from down the concourse in the heart of the mall. It collided with the power rock from the stage, the calliope, and the chorus of beeps and chimes from a hundred smart and mobile devices. He could no more hear his thoughts than he could see the constellations at noon.
A middle-aged couple sat down at the next table, sharing a soft-serve cone and holding hands like teenagers. But Maddy didn’t lower her voice.
Was this some performance piece? Some kind of avant-garde stunt? Getting your revenge on the thankless public by scaring them shitless?
He barked a single-syllable laugh. That would be an idea.
Then what? Have you broken any laws?
None. There aren’t many to break.
Hope flashed across Maddy’s face. Then turn yourself in.
The answer: so simple, so obvious. For a moment, he was ready. Then he remembered.
I believe I’ve burnt that bridge.
Why, Peter? I don’t understand.
She looked up across the ellipse of eateries and pointed. There, near the food court entrance, two men in uniforms, a slant rhyme for police, nosed through the unnoticing crowd. Mall security. Panic filled Els. But he needed only fifteen seconds to do what he’d come here to do. He leaned forward, but didn’t touch her.
Mad? Before I met you, I thought I was going to be a chemist. That’s what I studied in college.
I know this, Peter. I was your wife, you know.
I’m sorry. I’m rambling.
So, what are you saying? That this was all some kind of vicarious fantasy? The road not taken?
In a way. I was. . I was trying. .
Oh, shit. Her hand rose and her eyes widened. You were composing. In DNA?
It did sound ludicrous. But what was music, ever, except pure play?
She stared at him as she’d done once, the night they broke. The night she’d said, The game is over. Nobody’s listening. They’re never coming back.
What is it you want? she hissed.
Her anger surprised him. The stored years. He’d never wanted anything but to give back something as fine as he’d been given. To make something worth hearing, and to send it out into the world.
Listen, he told her. I made a mistake.
She smoothed back her thinned hair. Apparently.
No, he said. Not the genetics. I’d do that all again.
The mall security officers looped up the concourse. They stopped to flirt with the Latina fast-food counter help. In another moment, they came abreast of the seating area, scouting the crowd. Els braced and hid his face. Maddy smiled at the heavyset officer as they passed the table. The man saluted her with one finger to the brow. The two guards ambled on, toward the wizard talent show. Maddy blew out her cheeks and exhaled. She would have made the greatest accomplice that any musical terrorist could have wanted.