“There’s the challenge, then. You always say you like challenges. You could do the experimental work you’ve always enjoyed. You might discover native plants of real value.”
“That’s what Foodlines is hoping. It’s like a biolab the size of a whole world, where a couple of billion years of evolution has already done the work of sorting out which biological products are most useful. But what about Dawn? She was born here at Burnt Willow. She’s not used to living anywhere else.”
“That argument again! Of all the irrelevant—” Aunt Stacy checked herself, as though she were used to speaking freely in front of Dawn, but couldn’t do it with Josh listening.
It also seemed to Josh that she gave him a strange and speculative look. Was she thinking what he was thinking, that he might be able to go to Solferino, even if Dawn could not?
“Ryan, we’ll talk this over later,” she continued. “But I’ll tell you now what I didn’t want to tell you before: Mort Langstrom of Foodlines called me while the three of you were up on the ridge. They really want young people on Solferino. They’d pay all the costs of equipment, training, and transportation, too. Mort said he’d like to come out here again tomorrow and talk some more. And I told him that would be fine.”
Josh saw Uncle Ryan sit up straighter, as though he were bracing for an argument. Then he nodded, leaned forward, and touched Aunt Stacy’s forearm. “What would we do without you, love, to look after us? I’ll talk to him, of course I will. But I’m telling you, Solferino isn’t for me. I can see why they want young people. There’s probably a million opportunities there for a young man; but I’m getting old.”
“Nonsense! You’re not old.” Aunt Stacy reached out and took Uncle Ryan’s hand in hers. Josh couldn’t help noticing that as she did so she flashed another quick glance at him. Then she looked away at once.
“But you’re right,” she said, “it would be a wonderful opportunity for a young person.”
Josh didn’t remember undressing and going to bed, but he must have done it, because here he was. The room he slept in was at the top of the house, with an east-facing window, and the midsummer sun streamed in soon after dawn.
He lay there for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. This room seemed to be a sounding box for the whole house. He could hear noises coming in from everywhere. He realized that it had been the sound of voices that woke him, more than the morning sun. Uncle Ryan had been talking to Aunt Stacy. Their words carried distinctly to Josh’s room, but in his semiconscious state he hadn’t followed their meaning. Now the voices had ended. He heard running water, a clatter of dishes, the whistle of a boiling kettle, and through the open window a welcoming bark from the old spaniel.
Mister Micklegruber. Josh remembered the dog’s name now, from his other visit to the farm. Who had picked that? Aunt Maria, for a guess. The overweight Mister Micklegruber—“Mick,” except when he was being told off, when it was “Mister Micklegruber!”—was apparently not included in his new aunt’s diet plans. Nor, for a bet, was the dog allowed inside the newly spick-and-span house.
Josh pushed back the covers, and found that he didn’t remember undressing because he hadn’t. Except for his shoes, which he had removed when he entered the house, he was fully dressed. His two cases sat unopened at the bedside.
He must have been really tired.
The staircase that led to the kitchen was old and creaking. Josh tiptoed down, trying not to make any noise at all. The next level had two doors. One of them was closed, and he remembered it as being Ryan and Stacy’s bedroom. The other was ajar. He peered in through the crack and saw Dawn. She was asleep, lying face up with her eyes closed and her mouth open. He realized now why she looked the same as when he had first met her. Her face was absolutely peaceful and unlined, like a baby’s.
The kitchen when he came to it bore signs that someone had been and gone. A single mug, washed up, stood neatly in the draining rack.
He was pretty hungry, but he didn’t feel that he could just go in and help himself to breakfast—particularly with Aunt Stacy’s views on who was in charge of the kitchen.
Instead, he headed for the old dairy at the back of the house. Uncle Ryan had been very specific: Josh was free to use all the computers and communications equipment in the new data center.
He took one quick look at the weather radar displays and satellite precipitation maps on the walls. Burnt Willow Farm stood out as a kind of inverse oasis, an isolated dry spot with plenty of soil moisture all around. He sat down and called for the general database. He didn’t know the spelling of the subject that had been on his mind since the previous day, but three tries did it.
Or-tistic. Aw-tistic. Au-tistic.
Autistic—autism. The download began into his headset.
“The terms autism and autistic were first used a century and a half ago, in the 1940s, when two physicians, Leo Kanner of Baltimore and Hans Asperger of Vienna, both described the condition. Curiously, both proposed the same name. Autism takes many forms, but it can be recognized by certain common behavior patterns: a preoccupation “with self, a disregard for external events and people, an obsessive repetition of particular acts, and particular, highly focused fixations.
“Although cases of onset at adolescence or even later are known, autism normally shows itself when a child is very young and persists for life. Autistic people sometimes have strange and singular talents—”
Josh, engrossed in what he was hearing and deaf to normal disturbances, felt a light touch on the back of his neck. He jerked sideways and almost fell off his chair.
He turned. Dawn was standing behind him. He ripped off the headset and gave a command to print the file, so he could look at it later in his room. He glanced guiltily at Dawn, but he didn’t have to worry. She showed no interest in knowing what he had been listening to, or in the keywords displayed on the screen.
She was smiling, apparently staring at the wall to the exclusion of everything else. “Breakfast,” she said. And then, “Ugh. Not mushrooms. You eat mushrooms? I’d just as soon eat worms and slugs.”
It was the small-child voice again. Again, Josh was convinced that she was quoting him, directly, from eight years ago. He hated mushrooms nearly as much as he hated olives, and that was saying something.
“Do you remember everything like that, word for word? Oh, never mind.” He turned off the data unit. “Are you telling me that Aunt Stacy is giving us mushrooms for breakfast?”
It was a waste of time. Dawn pulled her mouth to one side and rolled her eyes, but there was no knowing what she meant, or even if she was responding to his question. Josh followed her to the kitchen.
The food again was great—with one nose-wrinkling exception. Fortunately, Aunt Stacy had prepared each dish separately. The fried mushrooms sat in a neat circle in their own deep bowl. Josh left them untouched but he helped himself to everything else, noting that some of Aunt Maria’s breakfast staples had been eliminated. Hot scrapple and bacon glistening with fat, two of Uncle Ryan’s favorites, had been replaced by some sort of spiced curd. Liver and steak chops had vanished entirely. On the other hand, the beans and fried tomatoes and wheatcakes were the best that he had ever tasted. And this time there was no problem with quantity.