"Guessing, maybe," Rane said.
"Oh no, he does know. He's called it right four times so far. Now women come and ask him." "But . . . but, Lupe-"
"Stop for a moment," Lupe said. Then to the boy, "Okay, nino. Back out to play. Take some nuts."
The boy leaped down from her lap, trotted on all fours to the china nut dish on the plain, homemade coffee table. He took a handful of nuts, stuffed them into the pocket of his shorts and zipped it shut. He seemed to have no trouble using his hands. They were smaller than Rane thought they should have been, but he was less clumsy with them than a normal child would have been. He was certainly much faster than any normal child, probably faster than most adults. All his movements were smooth and graceful. A graceful four-year-old.
He stopped in front of her-beautiful child head, sleek catlike body. A miniature sphinx. What would it be when it grew up? Not a man, certainly.
"I don't like you either," Jacob said. "You're fat and you smell and you're ugly!" "Jacob!" Lupe stood up and started toward him. "Vayase! Ahora mismo! Outside!"
Jacob bounded out the door. No, human beings did not move that way. How had any disease made such a creature of a
child?
"He's telling the truth, you know," Lupe said. "You do look fat and odd to him, though you're not. And you smell . . . different. Also, he couldn't miss how much you were repelled by him."
"I don't understand how such a thing could happen," Rane whispered.
"It's the disease, I told you. We don't even have a name for it-the disease of Clay's Ark. All our children are like Jacob." "All . . . ?" Rane swallowed. "All animals? All things?"
"Shit!" Lupe said. "You're worse than I was. You should be more tolerant. He's a little boy." Rane stared at her pregnant belly.
"Oh yes," Lupe said. "This child will be like Jacob too, just as my son is. Beautiful and different. And, chica, your
children will be like him too. The disease doesn't go away. It just settles in and stays with you and you pass it on to strangers and to your children."
"Or you get treatment!" Rane said. "What the hell are you doing sitting in the middle of the desert giving birth to monsters and kidnapping people?"
Lupe smiled. "Eli says we're preserving humanity. I agree with him. We are. Our own humanity and everyone else's
because we let people alone. We isolate ourselves as much as we can, and the people outside stay alive and healthy- most of them."
"Most," Rane said with bitterness. "Most for now. But even now, not me. Not my father or sister. And what about you? You don't belong here either, do you?"
"I do now," Lupe said. "Before, I was a private hauler. You know. Good money if you survive. My truck broke down all the way over on I-Fifteen, and Eli caught me outside. When I realized what he had done to me, I thought I would
bide my time and kill him. Now, I think I'd kill anyone who tried to hurt him. He's family."
"Why?" demanded Rane. "If you really believe he's the cause of this sickness-and you know he's the guy who kidnapped you . . ." Rane shook her head. "Didn't you have a husband or anything back in the real world? What about your business?"
"I was divorced," Lupe said. "I lived in the truck on the road." She paused. Her voice became wistful. "I miss the road. I
almost got killed more times than I like to think about, but I miss it."
Rane listened without comprehension. A woman who could be nostalgic for work that kept nearly killing her could probably make any irrational adjustment.
"I didn't have anybody," Lupe said. "We lived in a cesspool. My parents' house got caught in a gang war, got bombed. One of the gangs wanted to make a no-man's-land, you know. They needed to put some space between their territory and their rivals'. So they bombed some houses, torched others. They got their no-man's-land. My parents, my brother,
and a lot of other people got killed. My ex-husband, he's a wino somewhere. Who cares? So I was alone. I'm not alone
here. I'm part of something, and it feels good. Even Orel. There was a time when I carried two guns plus the truck's usual defenses-and defensively, my truck was a goddamn tank-all to fight off people like him: bike packers, car bums, rogue truckers, every slimy maggot crawling over what's left of the highway system. But they're not all as bad as I thought. Orel isn't. Take away the gang and give him something better and he turns into a person. A man."
Rane listened with interest in spite of herself. She could not understand Lupe's interest in a man like Ingraham but she was beginning to respect Lupe. Rane liked to think of herself as tough, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion she could not have survived Lupe's life. She had never been alone, never been without someone who would help her if she
could not help herself. Now none of the people who cared about her could help her. Her father, her sister, two sets of
grandparents, and on her mother's side, a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Only a few of them were close to her, but every one of them could be counted on to come running if a member of the family needed help. Now, the only ones who knew of her need needed help as badly as she did.
PAST 13
Gabriel Boyd died.
Death was a relief to him, an end to more than physical suffering. Alive, he was frightened, confused, full of self- loathing for feelings he could neither control nor understand.
He had had to be put to bed because he was no longer able to keep his balance. He overcompensated, first for walking up and down steps, then for negotiating the irregularities of the ground outside, finally for walking over a level surface.
He could crawl, but nothing more.
As his sensitivity increased, he began to react with terror to slight sounds and cringe at the slightest touch. Most food- even the smell of food-nauseated him, though he was always hungry. Eli fed him ground, unseasoned raw meat, fresh vegetables, and fruit. He ate a little of this and kept it down.
His eyes had to be covered since any slight movement frightened him. His movements, even in bed, were either exaggerated and awkward or fine and incredibly controlled. He could no longer feed himself. Then he could no longer eat or drink even if fed. On the Ark, he would have been fed intravenously. But no member of the Ark crew who reached this stage had survived, reinfection or no. Eli and a weeping Meda cared for him, then for his wife, whose symptoms also worsened. He lost control of all his bodily functions. He urinated and defecated, spat and drooled. His body twitched and convulsed and sweated profusely. He probably shed enough disease organisms to contaminate a city. On the fourth day following the onset of symptoms, he died -probably of dehydration and exhaustion. On life support, he would have lasted longer, but the end would have been the same. Eli was glad there were no facilities for prolonging the old man's suffering.
Meda's mother died a day later as did her two brothers and a tiny, perfectly formed nephew born three months too soon. Meda herself never really sickened. She became more and more despondent as her family died, became almost suicidal, but her physical symptoms remained bearable. She was learning to use her enhanced senses or at least tolerate them. And in spite of all the horror, every night and sometimes during the day, she went to Eli or he came to her. Without discussion, he moved into her room. She did not understand how she could touch him with the disaster he had brought to her family happening all around her. Yet she found comfort with him. And, though she did not know it, she gave him comfort, eased his guilt simply by continuing to live. They leaned on each other desperately, and somehow held each other up.