Stella felt her stomach knot with confusion and indecision. It was what she had been thinking about in the school. Forming demes was impossible with humans around; they always found ways to interfere. For all she knew, demes were just what children tried on for practice. Soon they would be adults, and what would they do then?
How would they ever find out if humans kept clinging to them?
“It’s time to grow up,” Will said.
“Why, you’re so young,” Mrs. Hayden said dreamily. She was driving straight and steadily, but her voice sounded wrong, and Stella knew they had to do something in concert soon or Mrs. Hayden could go one way or the other.
“I’m only fifteen,” Stella said. Actually, she had not yet had her fifteenth birthday, but she always added in the time her mother had been pregnant with the first-stage embryo.
“There’s supposed to be a man there in his sixties, one of us,” Will said.
“That’s impossible,” Stella said.
“That’s what they say. He’s from the south, from Georgia. Or maybe Russia. They weren’t sure which.”
“Do you know where this place is?”
Will tapped his head. “They showed us a map before the camp was burned.”
“Is it real?”
Will could not answer this. “I think so./ I want it to be real.”
Stella closed her eyes. She could feel the warmth behind her eyelids, the sun passing over her face, the suspended redness, and below that the rising up of all her minds, all the parts of her body that yearned. To be alone with her own kind, making her own way, learning all she needed to learn to survive among people who hated her…
That would be an incredible adventure. That would be worth so much danger.
“It’s all you’ve wanted, I know it,” Will said.
“How do I know you’re not just persuading me?” Her cheeks added unconscious quotes to the emphasis on that word, which sounded so wrong, so lacking in nuance, so human.
“Look inside,” Will said.
“I have,” Stella said, a little wail that brought Mrs. Hayden’s head around.
“I’m fine,” Stella said, arms folded tightly across her chest. The tires squealed as Mrs. Hayden straightened the car out on the road.
Stella gripped the arm of her seat.
“I’m sweating like a bastard,” she told Will with a little giggle.
“So am I,” Will said, and smiled crookedly.
There was one last question. “What about sex?” she asked, so quietly Will did not hear and she had to repeat herself.
“Don’t you know?” Will said. “Humans can rape us, but we don’t rape each other. It just doesn’t work that way.”
“What if it happens anyway, and we don’t know what we’re doing, or how to stay out of trouble?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Will said. “Does anybody? But I know one thing. With us, it doesn’t happen until it’s right. And now it isn’t right.”
That was honest enough. She could feel her independence returning, and all the answers were the same.
She was strong. She was capable. She knew that.
She focused on fever-scenting for Mrs. Hayden.
“Whoo,” Will said, and waved his hand in the air. “You strong, lady.”
“I am woman,/ I am strong,” Stella sang softly, and they giggled together. She leaned forward. “Please, would you take us to California?” she asked Mrs. Hayden.
“We’ll have to stop for gas. I only brought a little money.”
“It’ll be enough,” Will said.
“Do you need the book?” Stella asked him. It was a yellowed, dog-eared, and now thoroughly reduced paperback called Spartacus by Howard Fast.
“Maybe,” Will said. “I really don’t know.”
“Did you learn that in the woods, too?”
Will shook his head. “I made it up myself,” he said. “We have to be smart. They were taking us to Sandia. They wanted to kill us all. We have to think for ourselves.”
37
MARYLAND
The cab dropped off Kaye and Marge Cross at a single-story brick house on a pleasant, slightly weedy street in Randallstown, Maryland. The grass in the front yard stood a foot high and had long since turned straw yellow. A big old Buick Riviera from the last century, covered with rust and half-hearted patches of gray primer, sat up on blocks in the oil-stained driveway.
They walked up the overgrown path to the front porch. Kaye stood on the lower step, unsure where to look or what to expect. Cross punched the doorbell. Somewhere inside the house, electronic chimes played the four opening notes from Beethoven’s Fifth. Kaye stared at a plastic tricycle with big white wheels almost lost in the grass beside the porch.
The woman who opened the door was Laura Bloch, from Senator Gianelli’s office. She smiled at Kaye and Cross. “Delighted you could be here,” she said. “Welcome to the Maryland Advisory Group on National Biological Policy. We’re an ad hoc committee, and this is an exploratory meeting.”
Kaye looked at Cross, lips downturned in dubious surprise.
“You belong here,” Cross told her. “I’m not sure I do.”
“Of course you do, Marge,” Bloch said. “Come on in, both of you.”
They entered and stood in the small foyer opposite the living room, separated by a low wall and a row of turned wooden columns. The inside of the house—brown carpet, cream-colored walls decorated with family pictures, colonial-style maple furniture and a coffee table covered with magazines and a flattop computer—could have been anywhere in the country. Typical middle-class comfort.
In the dining room, seven people sat around a maple table. Kaye was not acquainted with most of them. She did recognize one woman, however, and her face brightened.
Luella Hamilton walked across the living room. They stood apart for a moment, Kaye in her pants suit, Mrs. Hamilton in a long orange and brown caftan. She had put on a lot of weight since she and Kaye had last seen each other, and not much of it from her pregnancy.
“Dear baby Jesus,” Mrs. Hamilton let out with a small, wild-eyed laugh. “We were just on the phone. You were going to stay put. Marge, what is this all about?”
“You know each other?” Cross asked.
“We sure do,” Kaye said. But she did not explain.
“Welcome to the revolution,” Luella said, smiling sweetly. “You know Laura. Come meet the others. Quite a high-toned group we have here.” She introduced Kaye to the three women and four men seated at the table. Most were in their middle years; the youngest, a woman, appeared to be in her thirties. All were dressed in suits or stylish office work clothes. All looked like Washington insiders to Kaye, who had met plenty. She saw gratefully that they were all wearing name tags.
“Most of these folks come from the offices of key senators and representatives, eyes and ears, not necessarily proxies,” Laura Bloch explained. “We won’t connect the dots until later. Ladies and gentlemen, Kaye is both a working scientist and a mommy.”
“You’re the one who discovered SHEVA,” said one of the two gray-haired men. Kaye tried to demur, but Bloch shushed her.
“Take credit where it’s due, Kaye,” Bloch said. “We’re presenting a paper to the president within the week. Marge sent us your conclusions about genomic viruses, along with a lot of other papers. We’re still digesting them. I’m sure there are lots of questions.”
“Wow, I’ll say,” chuckled a middle-aged man named Kendall Burkett. “Worse than homework.”