Mutant Star (3 page)

“Does that include me, Dad?” Alanna’s grin matched her father’s.

“Absolutely,” Skerry said. “Especially when you’re late.” He swatted her playfully on the rear and she scooted out of reach toward the door. “Let’s move ’em out, troops. We’ve got miles and mutants to go before we eat.”

***

The road ahead was a steep, winding ribbon. Just the way Rick Akimura liked it. He gunned the motor of his jet cycle as it skimmed along over the ground and sped around a turn. And another. Old Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains was a perfect roller-coaster ride when the road was clear and conditions were right. He had taken this route a hundred times and never tired of it.

In and out, up and down. Rick nodded happily in time with the Eroica on his headset. Blue sky above the clear road below, he thought. And Ludwig van B. in my ear. His friends all thought his choice of music was odd, but then what did they expect from the son of a composer? Rick whistled along with the rollicking melody. The only thing missing was the Santa Cruz pub-crawler gang: Tuli and Dave, Maria and Henley. His crowd.

They didn’t have golden eyes, and they didn’t care that he did. After all, he had no powers. A null was always welcome at their festivities or on the road. He’d much rather be on his way to a party in San Francisco right now than racing up the highway to the Berkeley labs to pick up his twin brother for a Mutant Council meeting. But he had promised his mother that he would attend, just this once. And he hated to break his word to her.

She did have golden eyes like his own. And not a shred of mutant power, either. At times he felt more twinned to her than to Julian. Melanie was a null, too, and that provided a warm, empathic linkage between them. It was a powerful bond. His father, Yosh, was a nonmutant, which suited Rick just fine. Only Rick’s fraternal twin, Julian, was an operant mutant in the Akimura household. Which made him sort of the odd man out. Useful as hell, Rick had to admit. A telepath who could carry the burden of mutant power without ever complaining. His brother Julian was a trifle saintly, but a good guy nevertheless.

Rick swerved to avoid a slow-moving truck and gracefully pulled ahead. His dark brown hair flew out behind him in the wind, and for a moment Rick was tempted to stand up and wave his arms in abandon. What did he need mutant powers for? Levitation? Telepathy? All that mumbo jumbo. This was real freedom.

“Hey!”

The road before him shimmered and grew blurry. He rubbed his eyes. That didn’t help. The knobby gray rock formations that lined the highway seemed to shift and move like living clay. He thought he heard a faint rumbling like thunder. Earthquake? A huge boulder reared up in front of him. Rick yanked the cycle to the right. The road wiggled up and down, moving beneath him. Tires shrieking, the cycle went into a wild skid. Rick fought to regain control. But the front wheel hit the edge of the roadbed and the cycle bucked him off. He tumbled through the air, up, then down into a gray-green thorny tangle of chaparral and lay there, stunned and panting, squinting up into the sunlit sky. Would the next tremor send him spiraling down into the canyon below?

“Buddy, you all right?” A short, swarthy man in a blue delivery suit jumped out of the cab of the slug-slow truck that Rick had just passed, grabbed him by the shoulder, and pulled him out of the brambles.

“Hey, you’re a mutant, aren’t you?” He gawked at Rick, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you just levitate out of that bush? Do you feel okay? Want to go to the hospital?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” Rick tried to keep his irritation under control. After all, the guy could have just left him lying there with prickers up his ass. And maybe he would have preferred it that way. “I’m a little shaken up, thanks. And my cycle’s okay. Just lost my headset.”

“Man, you really went flying.” His rescuer shook his head. “The road looks clear to me. Did you hit something?”

Clear? Rick looked around. No sign of any boulder. Had he imagined it? But he’d felt the ground shake underneath his cycle. This couldn’t be a hangover, could it? Some legacy from the party last night. Impossible. Impossible. It was a good party, but not one that would generate hallucinations the next morning. Maybe that boulder was just up the road, out of sight. Never mind. He was late. Julian would be waiting for him. And all those other good little mutants at the Council meeting. He brushed the dirt off his cycle seat, jumped on, and started the motor.

“Thanks a lot.” He waved and sped away up the road toward Berkeley.

.

******************

2

Julian was waiting outside the pink concrete lab building, leaning against a pillar, blue lab coat flapping in the warm December wind. Students flowed around him, chatting, laughing, intent on books, squinting into the late afternoon sun as they shouldered their bookbags, hefted their coffeebulbs, flirted and laughed, and gloried in the luxury of being young. Of having time to learn and time to squander.

He watched them enviously, remembering his own carefree undergraduate days with pleasure. He’d taken his degree here at Berkeley, finished in three years, gotten his master’s right after, and was on the advanced track in the psychology department. He would have his doctorate by June, if he worked hard. And then, farewell to academia. He could already feel the pressures of professional commitment from all sides.

“Become a healer,” his mother had said. “I don’t know why you want to fight the competition outside the mutant community. You’d be a wonderful healer.”

Hell, he knew all about the healing tradition for mutants. And yes, his mother was probably right. He would make a good healer. But Julian wanted more than the placid, remote life behind high walls that path would provide. He wanted to combine the medical knowledge of both worlds, mutant and non, in one healing, embracing discipline. And Dr. Seguy’s investigation of psychic flares was the beginning. He was convinced of it.

The roar of Rick’s cycle announced his arrival. That damned jet-cycle engine, Julian thought. It rattles the windows of every building on the block. Strictly against decibel limitations as set by the DMV. And here he comes now, that scofflaw, riding down the street like he owns it.

A pretty blond student gave Rick the eye. Julian smiled. His brother looked like a schoolgirl’s dream—and her parents’ worst nightmare. Those atavistic leather jeans. And the ruffled white poet’s shirt that all bikers wore. Dark blue eyeshades, tousled brown hair, small golden hoop gleaming in his left ear, and a grin so wicked it should have been illegal. Privately, Julian admired his brother’s independent spirit, even if he never said so aloud.

Rick pulled the cycle into a tight space between two posts and killed the motor.

“Hi,” Julian said.

“Hi yourself.” Rick pushed his shades up over his forehead and wiped his face wearily. He looked sweaty, and his jacket was covered by a fine layer of dust. “Ready?”

“Been ready for three hours.” Julian swung his clothes sack onto the back of the cycle. “What’d you do, hurry?” He took in his brother’s grimy face and dusty clothing. “What happened?”

“Had a close encounter with a manzanita bush,” Rick said. “Do I look real bad?”

“Just well used.” Julian brushed him off. Then, with practiced grace, he slid onto the cycle behind Rick and put on his helmet. Before he was even settled, Rick set out, gunning toward Marin County.

“Anything new in the lab?” Rick shouted.

Saw a wild vision
. It was easier to mindspeak than bellow over the wind—easier, that is, for those who could.

“Such as?”

Woman in white, with white hair and prism eyes.

Rick started laughing. “And I’m the one with a reputation for partying. Well, do you believe it?”

Can’t say. Is it real? A vision? A fantasy? The common theory is that these mental flares contain precognitive material. Messages from the future.

“And don’t the normals just go crazy over that kind of thing?” Rick said. “Read my palm, mutant. Tell me my fate.” He cackled maniacally.

You think it’s funny, Rick, but there may be something to it.

Julian knew he sounded defensive. Rick clammed up. Well, Rick had little curiosity about these things—he didn’t care that Julian loved the lab and lived to investigate boojums. Julian knew that his brother preferred the nuts-and-bolts purity of chips and wires at his job in the screenbrain shop at Santa Cruz mall. No uncertainty there.

Rick took a corner with tires screeching.

Hey! I want to get to the meeting in one piece—even if you
don’t.

“I’ll settle for leaving it in one piece,” Rick said.

You don’t have a good track record there.

“No,” he agreed cheerfully. “I rely on you to keep me out of fights and in line.”

Thanks. But I resign the honor out of respect for my health.

Rick smiled. “I don’t blame you. Hang on, bro. I’ll at least try to make it to the meeting before the vote.”

***

Melanie checked her watch again and turned impatiently to her husband. “Where the hell are they, Yosh? Rick and Julian should have been here hours ago.”

Yosh shrugged. “You know Rick. If he says noon, he means five. If he says five, he means tomorrow. Be glad he’s coming at all. You know he doesn’t enjoy these meetings any more than you did when you were a kid.” He noodled with his pocket synthesizer, striking random chord combinations. “Can’t say that I blame him.”

Around them, the Council chamber was filling with clan members. The huge auditorium was carved into layered tiers lined with comfortable seats, headsets, and screens. There were more unfamiliar faces this year than last, and many of them were nonmutants. Not that it mattered one whit to Melanie. Hadn’t she brought a nonmutant, her husband, into the heart of the clan when she’d rejoined the Council? And why shouldn’t the meetings be open to nonmutants? If they could gain comfort from the sharing, from the chants and rituals, then let them attend and be welcome. She knew that not everybody shared her sentiments—in fact, a splinter group of mutants demanding a return to orthodoxy had started to hold meetings somewhere near San Diego. As far as she was concerned, come one, come all. She’d have felt a bit more hospitable, though, if she would have seen her two sons among all those faces.

“They’d better get here in time for the vote,” she said. “They should at least have a say in who the new Book Keeper is now that Rebekah Terling is dead.”

Yosh squinted at her skeptically. “Aren’t you asking for trouble? Julian’s getting kind of stuffy. Of course, even he might pause before he voted for a hard-line conservative like Paula Byrne. She would love to lock every nonmutant out of these meetings. Including yours truly.”

Melanie nodded. “Wouldn’t she, though? But she hasn’t got a chance. She hides down south with her little band of retrograde mutants—what do they call themselves? The True Host of the Book. I don’t know. Some people just get stuck.”

“More like frozen. I don’t think she has a hope in hell of winning general election to a broader post. And if your favorite son has anything to say about it, he’d probably make Skerry the Book Keeper. Which might not be such a bad idea. He’d probably disband the Council just for the hell of it.”

“Skerry as Book Keeper?” Melanie began to laugh. “Never in a million years could I see him presiding over a meeting. It’s still difficult to get used to him showing up each year.”

“Practicing to be a patriarch,” Yosh said. “Maybe I’ll take notes.”

“Good idea, ‘Papa Haydn.’” Melanie kissed him quickly, then turned, startled. “There’s Ethan Hawkins. I was wondering if he would show after I wangled him that last-minute invitation. I’d better go shepherd him around. Business before family.”

***

Alanna helped her father unload the wallpiece. It was one of her favorites. Her mother had let her help with the glazing at the end, and the beautiful metallic sheen, repeated in a hundred glistening particles, fascinated her each time she looked at it. She was proud that the work would hang in the Mutant Council chambers. But then, her mother’s artwork graced fine collections around the world—and even beyond, on the Moon. Maybe someday Narlydda’s work would travel to Mars.

“Watch that corner, Teenie,” her father growled. “One ding on that surface and we’ll both be looking for work.”

He used her pet name, which meant he wasn’t really serious. Was he ever serious? Yes, when it came to guarding her from the wolves he imagined were always at her heels. When would her father realize she was no longer a child?

Alanna brushed back her long, curling hair and grinned at her father. Maybe he would help her sneak out of the meeting later and they could go into Sausalito and laugh at the tourists like they did last year. She admired her mother and loved her, yes, but she felt closer to her father. He was fearless, irreverent, and best of all, he indulged her shamelessly.

She had watched him deflate some of the larger egos in the clan and silently cheered him on. The last thing in the world she wanted was a predictable father. But no fear of that—even with his gray hair and beard, he still looked like an outlaw to her.