I feel that, somehow, we will suffer for the destruction of the old race.
"That's backward thinking," Jessica said. She had read my mind, of course. Her telepathic talents are stronger and more developed than either Jonathan's or mine. "Their deaths meant nothing. We cannot feel remorse. We are the new ones, with new emotions and new hopes and new dreams and new rules."
"Sure," I said. "You're right."
WEDNESDAY, WE WENT DOWN TO THE BEACH AND BURNED THE CORPSES of the dead sunbathers. We all like the sea, and we do not want to be without a stretch of unpolluted sand. Putrefying bodies make for a very messy beach.
When we finished the job, Jonathan and I were weary. But Jessica wanted to do the nasty.
"Children our age shouldn't be capable of that," Jonathan said.
"But we are capable," Jessica said. "We were meant to do it. And I want to. Now."
So we did the nasty. Jonathan and her. Then me and her. She wanted more, but neither of us cared to oblige.
Jessica stretched out on the beach. Her shapeless, slender body was white against the white sand. "We'll wait," she said.
"For what?" Jonathan asked.
"For the two of you to be ready again."
FOUR WEEKS AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD, JONATHAN AND I WERE alone on the beach, soaking up the sun. He was oddly silent for a while, almost as if he was afraid to speak.
At last he said, "Do you think it's normal for a girl her age to be always… wanting like that? Even if she is one of the new race?"
"No."
"She seems… driven."
"Yes."
"There's a purpose we don't grasp."
He was right. I sensed it too.
"Trouble," he said.
"Maybe."
"Trouble coming."
"Maybe. But what trouble can there be after the end of the world?"
TWO MONTHS AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD AND THE BURNING OF OUR parents, when Jonathan and I were getting bored with the house and wanted to strike out for more exotic places, Jessica let us in on the big news. "We can't leave here just yet," she said. Her voice was especially forceful. "We can't leave for several more months. I'm pregnant."
WE BECAME AWARE OF THAT FOURTH CONSCIOUSNESS WHEN JESSICA WAS in her fifth month of pregnancy. We all woke in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, nauseated, sensing this new person.
"It's the baby," Jonathan said. "A boy."
"Yes," I said, wincing at the psychic impact of the new being. "And although he's inside of you, Jessica, he's aware. He's unborn but completely aware."
Jessica was racked with pain. She whimpered helplessly.
"THE BABY WILL BE OUR EQUAL, NOT OUR SUPERIOR," JESSICA INSISTED. "And I won't listen to any more of this nonsense of yours, Jonathan."
She was only a child herself, yet she was swollen with child. She was getting to be more grotesque with each passing day.
"How can you know he isn't our superior?" Jonathan asked. "None of us can read his mind. None of us can—"
"New species don't evolve that fast," she said.
"What about us?"
"Besides, he's safe — he came from us," she said. Apparently, she thought that this truth made Jonathan's theory even more the lie.
"We came from our parents," Jonathan said. "And where are they? Suppose we aren't the new race. Suppose we're a brief, intermediate step — the cocoon stage between caterpillar and butterfly. Maybe the baby is—"
"We have nothing to fear from the baby," she insisted, patting her revolting stomach with both hands. "Even if what you say is true, he needs us. For reproduction."
"He needs you," Jonathan said. "He doesn't need us."
I sat and listened to the argument, not knowing what to think. In truth, I found it all a bit amusing even as it frightened me. I tried to make them see the humor: "Maybe we have this wrong. Maybe the baby is the Second Coming — the one Yeats wrote about in his poem, the beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born."
Neither of them thought that was funny.
"I never could stand Yeats," Jonathan said.
"Yes," Jessica said, "such a gloomy ass, he was. Anyway, we're above superstitions like that. We're the new race with new emotions and new dreams and new hopes and new rules."
"This is a serious threat, Jerry," Jonathan said. "It's not anything to joke about."
And they were at it again, screaming at each other — quite like Mother and Father used to do when they couldn't make the household budget work. Some things never change.
THE BABY WOKE US REPEATEDLY EVERY NIGHT, AS THOUGH IT ENJOYED disturbing our rest. In Jessica's seventh month of pregnancy, toward dawn, we all were jolted awake by a thunder of thought energy that poured from the womb-wrapped being-to-be.
"I think I was wrong," Jonathan said.
"About what?" I asked. I could barely see him in the dark bedroom.
"It's a girl, not a boy," he said.
I probed out with my mind and tried to get a picture of the creature inside Jessica's belly. It resisted me successfully, for the most part, just as it resisted Jonathan's and Jessica's psychic proddings. But I was sure it was male, not female. I said so.
Jessica sat up in bed, her back against the headboard, both hands on her moving stomach. "You're wrong, both of you. I think it's a boy and girl. Or maybe neither one."
Jonathan turned on the bedside lamp in the house by the sea and looked at her. "What is that supposed to mean?"
She winced as the child within her struck out hard against her. "I'm in closer contact with it than either of you. I sense into it. It isn't like us."
"Then I was right," Jonathan said.
Jessica said nothing.
"If it's both sexes, or neither, it doesn't need any of us," he said.
He turned off the light again. There was nothing else to do.
"Maybe we could kill it," I said.
"We couldn't," Jessica said. "It's too powerful."
"Jesus!" Jonathan said. "We can't even read its mind! If it can hold off all three of us like that, it can protect itself for sure. Jesus!"
In the darkness, as the blasphemy echoed in the room, Jessica said, "Don't use that word, Jonathan. It's beneath us. We're above those old superstitions. We're the new breed. We have new emotions, new beliefs, new rules."
"For another month or so," I said.
HARDSHELL
ARTERIES OF LIGHT PULSED THROUGH THE BLACK SKY. IN THAT STROBOscopic blaze, millions of cold raindrops appeared to have halted in midfall. The glistening street reflected the celestial fire and seemed to be paved with broken mirrors. Then the lightning-scored sky went black again, and the rain resumed. The pavement was dark. Once more the flesh of the night pressed close on all sides.
Clenching his teeth, striving to ignore the pain in his right side, squinting in the gloom, Detective Frank Shaw gripped the Smith & Wesson.38 Chief's Special in both hands. He assumed a shooter's stance and squeezed off two rounds.