Mitch stood behind Kaye. Their daughter did not see them at first. She was chattering happily with the twins and another boy.
“I’ll get her,” Mitch said.
“Wait,” Kaye said. Stella appeared so happy. Kaye was willing to risk a few minutes for this.
Then Stella looked up, pushed to her feet, and let the musical cards fall from her hands. She circled her head in the air and sniffed.
Mitch saw another child, a boy, enter the yard from a gate in the front. He was about Stella’s age. Kaye saw him, too, and recognized him immediately. They heard a woman’s frantic calls in Spanish and Kaye knew what they were, what they meant.
“We have to leave,” Mitch said.
“No,” Kaye said, and held him back with her arm. “Just for a moment. Please. Watch!”
Stella and the boy approached each other. The other children one by one fell silent. Stella circled the young boy, face blank for a long moment. The boy made small sighs, his chest heaving as if he had been running. He rubbed at his face with quick dabs of spit on his sleeve. Then he bent over and sniffed behind Stella’s ear. Stella sniffed behind his ear and they held hands.
“I’m Stella Nova,” Stella said. “Where are you from?”
The small boy just smiled, and his face twitched in ways Stella had not seen before. She found her own face responding. She felt the rush of blood to her skin and she laughed out loud, a delighted, high-pitched shriek. The boy smelled of so much — of his family and the way his home smelled and of the food his mother cooked, and his cats, and Stella watched his face and understood a little of what he was saying. He was so rich, this little boy. Their dapples colored madly, almost at random. She watched the boy’s pupils fleck with color, rubbed her fingers on his hands, feeling the skin, the shivers of response.
The boy spoke in broken English and Spanish simultaneously. His mouth moved in a way that Stella was familiar with, shaping the sounds passing along both sides of his ridged tongue. Stella knew a fair amount of Spanish and tried to answer. The boy jumped up and down with excitement; he understood her! Talking to people was usually so frustrating for Stella, but this was even worse, because suddenly she knew what talking might really be.
Then she looked to one side and saw Kaye and Mitch.
Simultaneously, Kaye saw the woman in the kitchen window, using her phone. The woman did not look at all happy.
“Let’s go,” Mitch said, and Kaye did not disagree.
“Where are we going now?” Stella asked from her safety seat in the back of the Chevy Lumina as Mitch drove south.
“Mexico, maybe,” Kaye said.
“I want to see more like the boy,” Stella said, pouting fiercely.
Kaye closed her eyes and saw the boy’s terrified mother, grabbing him away from Stella, shooting a dirty look at Kaye; loving and hating her own child. No hope for bringing the two together again. And the woman in the window, too afraid to even come outside and talk with her.
“You will,” Kaye said dreamily. “You were very beautiful with the boy.”
“I know,” Stella said. “He was one of me.”
Kaye leaned over the back of the seat and looked at her daughter. Her eyes were dry, she had thought about this for so long, but Mitch rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Why did we have to leave?” Stella asked.
“It’s cruel to keep her away from them,” Kaye told Mitch.
“What are we going to do, ship her off to Iowa? I love my daughter and I want to be her father and have her in this family. A normal family.”
“I know,” Kaye said distantly. “I know.”
“Are there many like the boy, Kaye?” Stella asked.
“About a hundred thousand,” Kaye said. “We’ve told you that.”
“I would love to talk with them all” Stella said.
“She probably could, too,” Kaye said with a smile at Mitch.
“The boy told me about his cat,” Stella said. “He has two kittens. And the kids liked me, Kaye, Momma, they really liked me.”
“I know,” Kaye said. “You were beautiful with them, too.” Kaye was so proud and yet her heart ached for her daughter.
“Let’s go to Iowa, Mitch,” Stella suggested.
“Not today, Sweet Rabbit,” Mitch said.
The highway ran straight south through the desert.
“No sirens,” Mitch observed flatly.
“Did we make it again, Mitch?” Stella asked.
AFTERWORD
I’ve made a substantial effort in this novel to make the science accurate and the speculations plausible. The ongoing revolution in biology is far from over, however, and it is very likely that many of the speculations here will turn out to be wrong.
As I’ve done my research and spoken to scientists around the world, I’ve come away with an unshakable sense that evolutionary biology is about to undergo a major upheaval — not in the next few decades, but in the next few years.
Even as I finish revisions, articles are appearing in the scientific literature that support a number of speculative details. Fruit flies, it seems, can adapt in only a few generations to gross changes in climate. The implications of this are still controversial. The most recent, in the December — January 1998-99 issue of New Scientist, points up the contributions that human endogenous retroviruses might make to the progress of HIV, the AIDS virus; Eric Towler, of the Science Applications International Corporation, says he “has evidence that HERV-K enzymes may help HIV to evade potent drugs.” This is similar to the mechanism of swapped viral tool kits that frightens Mark Augustine.
The mystery, as it unfolds, will be absolutely fascinating; we truly are on the verge of discovering the secrets of life.
A SHORT BIOLOGICAL PRIMER
Humans are metazoans, that is, we are made up of many cells. In most of our cells there is a nucleus that contains the “blueprint” for the entire individual. This blueprint is stored in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid); DNA and its complement of helper proteins and organelles make up the molecular computer that contains the memory necessary to construct an individual organism.
Proteins are molecular machines that can perform incredibly complicated functions. They are the engines of life; DNA is the template that guides the manufacture of those engines.
DNA in eucaryotic cells is arranged in two interwoven strands — the “double helix” — and packed tightly into a complex structure called chromatin, which is arranged into chromosomes in each cell nucleus. With a few exceptions, such as red blood cells and specialized immune cells, the DNA in each cell of the human body is complete and identical. Researchers estimate that the human genome — the complete collection of genetic instructions — consists of between sixty thousand and a hundred thousand genes. Genes are heritable traits; a gene has often been defined as a segment of DNA that contains the code for a protein or proteins. This code can be transcribed to make a strand of RNA (ribonucleic acid); ribosomes then use the RNA to translate the original DNA instructions and synthesize proteins. (Some genes perform other functions, such as making the RNA constituents of ribosomes.)
Many scientists believe that RNA was the original coding molecule of life, and that DNA is a later elaboration.
While most cells in the body of an individual carry identical DNA, as the person grows and develops, that DNA is expressed in different ways within each cell. This is how identical embryonic cells become different tissues.