Of course she did. She remembered lots of yelling, lots of blood, an empty bottle of scotch, a straight razor. If one of the maids hadn’t found her in time, she might have bled out right there on the floor of the master bath.
Her tail still had the scars. Little ridges of skin where the ugly pig hair wouldn’t grow.
Quietly, so he wouldn’t press the issue: “Yeah. I remember.”
“You’re a different person now. I’m proud of you.”
Niobe lowered her eyes, nodded. She sniffed again. “It helps having people who care about the kids. Like you. And Christian.”
“And we’re making progress. Two years ago, a full month would have been unthinkable. We’ll beat this thing. The important thing, Genetrix, is not giving up.”
Niobe didn’t say anything. More tears came. The room went out of focus.
Pendergast stood. He paced over to his desk and picked up the candy jar. In a lighter, more jovial tone, he said, “Quite a trio in this clutch!”
He offered her a chocolate. Niobe declined. Sweets made her break out even worse than normal.
“Yectli certainly was a shock.”
One corner of her mouth curled up in a half-smile at the pun. She snorted. Then she looked up, worried.
“Was anybody hurt? He didn’t mean to. He just wanted to impress me. Kids are like that.”
Pendergast waved away her concerns. “No worries. He frightened the technicians, and fried an expensive camera, but otherwise no harm done. I found it funny, myself.”
“Do you think he’s a joker? The albinism, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Who can say? Your hatchlings vary so greatly from one to the next . . .” He trailed off. “Do you think he’s a joker?” He narrowed his eyes and scratched his beard again. “Were you thinking about jokerism when you were with Christian?”
“No. Why?”
“I want to show you something.” Pendergast opened a wooden cabinet to reveal a flat-screen television and a DVD player. He pressed a button and the static blinked into a view of therapy room two from behind the mirror.
She watched herself saying, “Maybe we can leave the curtains closed, just once.”
Then Pendergast fast-forwarded until Yectli hatched. Yves’s head kept bobbing into the frame as he danced on the ceiling. “Watch what I can do,” boasted Yectli.
Zap! The image returned to static.
“Quite a coincidence,” said the doctor. “You expressed unhappiness with the camera, and then poof! A manikin with the power to address your unease.”
“You think I did that on purpose somehow?”
“Perhaps your mental state during copulation determined Yectli’s power.”
“Jesus, Doc! If I had any control over their abilities, don’t you think not dying would come first?” Niobe threw up her arms. “God!”
He raised his hands, palm out. “Fair enough.” As he closed the cabinet, he said, almost as an aside, “Has Yvette demonstrated her power to you yet? We’re still unclear on whether she’s an ace or a deuce.”
“Nope. She’s a quiet one.” Aren’t you, sweetheart?
Better to be thought a fool, Mom.
After a happy but bittersweet lunch with Yectli, Yvette, and Yves, Niobe loaded up one of the kitchen carts with books, magazines, and a cooler of ice cream. She promised to rejoin the children for a movie night as soon as she finished her rounds.
Mick absorbed ice cream through his fingertips while Niobe read another chapter of The Catcher in the Rye to him. She always let him have a little extra. His body contained the cure for cystic fibrosis; the wild card had cured him even as it rendered him a joker at age eight. By studying Mick, BICC researchers would one day save thousands of kids.
When she tugged the empty bowl from his fingers, he grabbed Niobe’s wrist. He tapped the book with his free hand while bobbing his head at her. Tap, tap. Nod, nod.
“Mick, I don’t understand. What? What’s wrong?”
He’s saying you’re like that catcher in the field of rye, said Yvette.
Because I remind him of Holden Caulfield?
No. Because you care so much.
Oh.
Niobe smiled. “Thank you, Mick. I like you, too.”
He let go. Plaster dust rained down on his sheets once again as he went back to knocking his head against the wall, just as he’d been doing when Niobe arrived.
“See ya tomorrow, Mick.”
In addition to voluntary residents like Niobe and Mick, the low-security wing housed a library, cafeteria, gym, and television lounge. The lounge also contained a computer with Internet access. Niobe swung through during her rounds to check her e-mail. She watched a few minutes of a football game, socializing with the patients and off-duty orderlies, while waiting for a turn at the computer.
Nothing from her parents, of course, but she did find a new e-mail from Bubbles, who was in New York. Another city on Niobe’s list of places to visit someday. Niobe decided to respond with a note about Xerxes’s death—Bubbles had met him and would want to know.
Moans went up around the lounge. The game had disappeared, to be replaced with the words “Special Report.” Niobe kept one ear on the TV while she typed. Several people threw things at the screen when President Kennedy announced a new gasoline rationing program. Niobe finished up the e-mail to Bubbles and resumed her rounds.
The earth-toned medium-security wing (brown, taupe) housed patients moderately dangerous to themselves and others. Some were here voluntarily; others at the behest of family, or the courts. Niobe’s first room had been in this wing. There were no voluntary committals in the yellow high-security wing.
Powder blue Q Sector, BICC’s maximum security wing, housed the worst of the worst. It was also the reason Niobe never let her children accompany her on the rounds.
The wing had been built into one of the spurs off the outer ring. Each cell required special construction tailored to the particular occupant, and the old salt caverns offered the space to do so. If you wanted to lock somebody up and lose the key, this was the place to do it.
Niobe hurried past the cell housing the joker woman covered in dozens of baby mouths. The active soundproofing never completely nullified their combined wailing. She also passed a lead-lined cell that housed a glowing, mummylike figure, and a watertight cell filled floor to ceiling with glycerin to prevent its occupant’s skin from igniting.
One denizen of Q Sector she didn’t skip, though she might have liked to, was known as the Racist. She tapped on the Plexiglas window of his cell. She never met his eyes when he looked at her; their darkness, their intensity, unsettled her. Prison gang tattoos covered most of his skin not covered by his jumpsuit.
“Bookmobile.”
“You still here, kike?” At some point in the past, he’d decided she was Jewish.
She slid his requested book—a dog-eared copy of The Turner Diaries —through the lazy Susan. It was originally his own copy, found on him when he was captured.
“How many times are you going to read this crap?” she asked. “Why don’t you read something educational instead?”
“How long until Uncle Shylock takes you back to Jew York City so I don’t have to see your ugly face no more?”
“I’ve told you,” she said, wheeling the cart away, “I’m not from New York.” She left the Racist to his solitude.
“Nibble they toes, nibble they fingers . . . ”
Her last stop was outside the cell of Terrence Wayne Cottle, aka Sharky, in reference to his gray skin and the serrated, triangular teeth that filled a mouth extending halfway around his head. Cottle embraced the identity enthusiastically. He’d eaten his victims to death.