Nothing was as it appeared to be; everything was part of this ongoing nightmare.
Michael was Adam.
Adam was God-only-knew-what.
Gillian wasn’t my friend, after all. We had talked and laughed and cried together. All the time she was a horrible enemy,
the worst of Them. Maybe she’d even thought about killing me?
I bent low to Michael and kissed the side of his face. “So you and Peter and Wendy are friends?” I said.
“We’re
best
friends,” he gushed.
Gillian interrupted us in a loud, stern voice. I’d never seen this side of her. “I want you to go straight to your room until
I tell you to come out. Go ahead, Michael. Now!”
The little boy stared up at his mother. At his biological mother? I wondered. He seemed confused and hurt, and I couldn’t
blame him one bit.
“Mommy,” he asked in total innocence, “are you going to put them to sleep? Please don’t do it. They’re my friends. They’ll
be good!”
Then the little boy began to sob uncontrollably. He was frightened and the tears were real and touching. Gillian seemed to
soften a bit. I saw the tiniest hint of the person I’d known. Then she pointed back toward the house.
“I said, go to your room, now go. Mister, go!” she shouted. “That’s an order.”
I looked in that direction, and sucked a sharp intake of air. “Oh Gillian, no,” I said.
On the porch was another small child. A girl. She looked nearly identical to Michael. She was Eve, wasn’t she? I remembered
the dying children at the School. The failed experiments. The “rejects.” And now this.
The nightmare just wouldn’t stop; it was coming in nauseating wave upon wave. I recognized a man standing in the doorway behind
Eve. He was Dr. Carl Puris, Gillian’s husband! But he couldn’t be!
Carl Puris had died of heart failure two summers before.
Kit spoke up at my side. “That’s Anthony Peyser,” he said. “Dr. Peyser is alive and well in Colorado. I finally found the
bastard.”
M
AXIMUM. MAXIMUM. Just go for it. Go like the wind blows. Go even faster!
Max tried not to be too pitifully scared out of her mind as she extended her wings and power-dived between a pair of tall
fir trees. She flew deeper and deeper into the heart of the woods, until she finally felt safe enough to hover and land.
Only then did she look behind to check her back.
No one was there.
She saw that she was all alone again. Actually, she didn’t like that either. She hated it, in fact. Hated it. Something inside
had warned her to get away, to escape, to fly as fast as she could.
She had to get help somehow, but Max didn’t have a clue how to do it. Who could she go to—now that Frannie and Kit weren’t
around to give her their good advice? Had they ever told her something that might be helpful now? What lessons had she learned
so far? Her brain was on fire with questions—but no answers.
She didn’t know exactly how it worked at the School, but she was smart, and she
snooped.
She sensed that Adam was very special. She had thought he’d been put to sleep, but obviously that wasn’t true. Adam was at
that big house in the mountains. The house where Frannie’s friend lived. Did that mean Frannie might be involved? Or Kit?
Whom could she trust? How could she get help? How, how, how? Think, think, think, girl!
But nothing came to her. Her mind drew a big, fat blank. Finally, she decided to pray. “Dear God in heaven, dear Father, please
help me and my friends. We pray to you every single day, but nothing good ever seems to happen. I’m not complaining, but now
is a good time to start. Okay?”
She knew about God and she liked the idea of Him pretty much. She had gone to church every Sunday morning for years—on the
TV. Now she needed proof that there really was a God. Max needed her prayers answered just this once, and she felt she deserved
it. All the children from the School deserved it. They always had.
And now she remembered something Uncle Thomas had said at the School. Like most things, he repeated it a lot, “drummed it
into her head.” He loved his own ideas and sayings, the big jerk. He’d said: the Lord helps them who help themselves.
W
E WERE TAKEN like pathetic, probably doomed prisoners to a place inside the large, sprawling mountainside house. I knew that
the house had been built on what had originally been a mine site. It wasn’t uncommon on Sugarloaf. Local kids had been playing
in the shafts for years. The guards separated Kit and me from the four winged children. Wendy and Peter started to sob, but
it didn’t matter to the Security men, who seemed heartless and uncaring.
“It’s okay, babies,” I told them.
“No, it isn’t. We know it isn’t,” they wailed in unison.
They were probably right. Unfortunately, their instincts about danger, and maybe about some humans, were so true, so accurate.
Two levels of heavy concrete and metal basement had been constructed when the house was built. I had never been down here,
and had no idea the basements existed. It was more deception, wasn’t it. Nothing was as it seemed when it came to Gillian.
I took everything in; I was still being a witness. A bright red box on the wall was marked:
Safety Blanket.
Lab coats and safety goggles were hung on hooks everywhere. A stainless steel door was marked:
Safety Showers.
I doubted that the massive Defense Department shelters in New Mexico were anywhere near as complex or state-of-the-art. A
great deal of money had been spent here.
We passed a lab and I could see inside. The new aesthetic of interior design. Burnished surfaces, not dull white walls. Brilliant
lighting, not dingy fluorescents. A couple of scientists were working under a Cell Culture hood. Cells could be kept alive
for long periods under the hood.
I felt a sharp jab in the back. A guard was moving us along, moving me along.
Kit and I were taken to quarters near what one of our captors called the North Woods Labs. Oz, Icarus, and the twins were
taken elsewhere. No one would tell us where.
“Are you going to put us to sleep?” I asked a black-bearded guard who stood at the door to our room. I was being bitterly
sarcastic.
“I’m sure that’s what the decision will be,” he said. He looked around at the others who had guns on Kit and me. “If it was
up to me, I’d fuck your brains out first. You don’t have a lot up top, but your ass is cute.”
He laughed. So did the other brutish guards. Then the door banged shut on Kit and me.
“What the hell happened to Stricker?” Kit said and slammed his hand against the wall. “That was definitely Dr. Peyser outside.”
“It was definitely Carl Puris, too. I went to his funeral in Boulder, Kit. God, my head hurts.”
“Peyser had a girlfriend named Susan Parkhill. She’s another top biologist. I suspect Susan Parkhill is none other than your
friend Gillian.”
I reached out and took Kit’s hand. He had been alone in this awful mess for such a long time. He’d been working against incredible
odds and strong forces. Only now did I understand what he’d been through.
There was a sharp rap on the door. It burst open almost immediately. One of the guards was there in the hallway.
“Gillian wants to see you,” he said. “Just
you,
Dr. O’Neill.”
I
WAS GETTING MUCH BETTER at cynically recognizing things for what they were, at seeing the dark side of life out here in Colorado,
a place I had once considered Paradise Gained.
Gillian wasn’t my friend.
She was my mortal enemy.
I knew exactly what was going to happen next.
This was to be an interrogation. It involved life or death.
Gillian wanted more information from me.Ishouldn’t give it to her.
“I do like you, Frannie.” Gillian began with one of her calculated, boldfaced lies. Who knows, maybe she even meant it. She
was sitting on a high-backed black leather chair in the library-den upstairs. She stared deeply into my eyes.
I felt betrayed all over again. I wanted to scream at her, curse her out royally, but I held everything in. Well, almost everything.
“Was that before or after you had David murdered? And Frank McDonough,” I said.
A cold look swept into her dark brown eyes. Her face was flat and expressionless. It was as if I were meeting her for the
first time. “And I would do it again. In this case, the end totally justified the means. Da Vinci and Copernicus had to break
laws to make their discoveries, Frannie. Think everything through before you judge too harshly. Please, join me.” She pointed
to a chair facing hers at a long mahogany table.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to “join” Gillian in anything. I was feeling sick in the pit of my stomach. “Maybe this talk
is good for your soul, but it doesn’t do much for mine. Please take me back downstairs. I don’t want to hear any more,
Susan.
Dr. Susan Parkhill?”
She frowned and tapped her fingers impatiently. “All right then, I need to hear things from you. Who have you spoken to? Make
this easy for me, for yourself, and for those children you seem so fond of.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I said in the calmest tone I could manage. “Now may I go back downstairs?”
Gillian’s eyes bore into my skull. “
Who
did you tell? Anyone other than your sister Carole?”
It was like a sucker punch to my stomach. I couldn’t speak.
“We haven’t found Carole and her girls yet. We will, though. I don’t need your help for that. Is there anyone else?”
I shook my head. God, how I hated her. There was a moment of silence between us as she studied me. My old friend.
“You don’t lie very well. That much I already know. So I suppose that I believe you, Frannie.”
The expression on her face changed; it actually softened. Gillian wanted to talk about herself. I recognized the self-satisfied
look in her eyes.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” she said. “It’s astonishing. You’ll understand once you hear it. We turned all the expected
research procedures over. Instead of inducing a minuscule amount of bird DNA into human zygotes, we induced a quite sizable
amount of bird chromosome. We ‘melted’ the chromosomes of several birds and of our human patients, by heating them until they
separated into their component strands of DNA. This may sound exotic, but it is an accepted technique.”
“You don’t have to talk down to me.”
She made a soft,
tutting
sound. “My husband’s breakthrough was to induce controlled genetic recombination between the strands. He actually directed
what in Nature is a random process of swapping genes from strand to strand. He didn’t actually expect the cells to divide
so readily, but they did. We were stunned when the sonogram showed that Max was viable. She started everything. She was the
first breakthrough, however imperfect.”
Sonogram.
I was right then. The children had been implanted in women’s uteruses… in uteruses of some kind, anyway.
Gillian continued. Her eyes were on my face, but she was staring right through me. “We worked through Dr. Brownhill’s in vitro
fertilization clinics in Boulder and Denver. Couples trusted him, and he convinced them there was no precedent for his methods,
which happened to be the truth. We’d harvest the woman’s egg, fertilize it with the husband’s sperm. Introduce a little DNA.
Then we implanted the embryo into the woman’s uterus.”
“You had the permission of these women and their husbands, of course?”
“The mothers aren’t important,” Gillian said angrily. “We studied birds at first, because birds live a very long time for
their size.”
I nodded. I’d already figured that much out. The Wandering Albatross can live up to seventy years. Parrots live even longer.
There are countless avian examples.
“The winged children were just the beginning…. It was at that time we made the most important breakthrough. This is what changed
everything. One of our worker bees discovered a promoter for a gene that soaks up free radicals. As you know, free radicals
damage cells. Without cell damage, organisms do not,
cannot,
die of natural causes.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My body went cold. I could only listen to Gillian.
She smiled thinly. “Michael looks like any other little boy, doesn’t he?” she said. “So does Eve. Actually, those darling
children are worth any cost, any sacrifice. Michael’s life expectancy is two hundred years. Maybe even more than that.”
I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. Was that what all the costly research here and at the School was about? I think I may have
gasped. My mouth certainly dropped open.
Michael’s life expectancy is two hundred years.
Gillian nodded her head slowly. She had me. I understood what had been done. I finally
got
it.
“My son is the next step in the evolution of the human race.”
K
IT HAD PROBABLY BEEN INVOLVED in a hundred interrogations before, but he’d never been on the wrong end of one.
“My name is Thomas,” the man sitting across from him said. He was very much at ease, very sure of himself.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Kit said.
“I’ll bet you have. I’ll tell you my side, as long as we’re just talking here.”
“Sure, why not.”
“I was in the Air Force. I wanted more than anything to be a pilot.”
“Nice to have dreams,” Kit said and nodded agreeably. He was biding his time, trying to figure how to gain some advantage.
“Sure it is. Unfortunately, my eyesight wasn’t quite up to Air Force specs. I don’t even have to wear glasses, but I couldn’t
be a pilot. I wound up teaching. Those who can’t, you know.”
“What level? Did you teach kids?” Kit asked.
“Oh, for a short time. But then I got an assistant professorship at the Air Force Academy. Taught biology there… to future
pilots.”
“Very nice.”
“It was. Ironic, though. You know, you’re good to talk to. A man’s man.”