Darwin's children

They were on their own. They had decided that was the safest course.

Kaye took off her slippers and ran barefoot back to the house. She would have to think like Stella and that was difficult. Kaye had observed her daughter as a mother and as a scientist for eleven years, and there had always been a small but important distance between them that she could not cross. Stella deliberated with a thoroughness Kaye admired, but reached conclusions she often found mystifying.

Kaye grabbed her handbag with her wallet and ID, pulled on her garden shoes, and exited through the back door. The small primer gray Toyota truck started instantly. Mitch maintained both their vehicles. She ground the tires down the dirt driveway, then caught herself and drove slowly along the country lane.

“Please,” she muttered, “no rides.”

8

Walking along the dirt margin of the asphalt road, Stella swung the plastic Gatorade bottle, rationing herself to a sip every few minutes. An old farm field plowed and marked for a new strip mall stretched to her right. Stella tightrope-walked a freshly cured concrete curb, not yet out of its mold boards. The sun was climbing in the east, black clouds stacked high in the south, and the air spun hot and full of the fragrances of dogwood and sycamore. The exhaust of cars going by, and a descending tail of carbon from a diesel truck, clogged her nose.

She felt at long last that she was doing something worthwhile. There was guilt, but she pushed aside concern for what her parents would think. Somewhere on this road she might meet someone who would not argue with her instincts, who would not feel pain simply because Stella existed. Someone like herself.

All her life she had lived among one kind of human, but she was another. An old virus called SHEVA had broken loose from human DNA and rearranged human genes. Stella and a generation of children like her were the result. This was what her parents had told her.

Not a freak. Just a different kind.

Stella Nova Rafelson was eleven years old. She felt as if she had been peculiarly alone all her life.

She sometimes thought of herself as a star, a bright little point in a very big sky. Humans filled the sky by the billions and washed her out like the blinding sun.

9

Kaye swung left just beyond the courthouse, turned the corner, drove half a block, and pulled into a gas station. When she had been a child, there had been little rubber-coated trip wires that caused a bell to ding whenever a car arrived. There were no longer any wires, no bell, and nobody came out to see what Kaye needed. She parked by the bright red-and-white convenience store and wiped tears from her eyes.

She sat for a minute in the Toyota, trying to focus.

Stella had a red plastic coin purse that held ten dollars in emergency money. There was a drinking fountain in the courthouse, but Kaye thought Stella would prefer something cold, sweet, and fruity. Odors of artificial strawberry and raspberry that Kaye found repugnant, Stella would wallow in like a cat in a bed of catnip. “It's a long walk,” Kaye told herself. “It's hot. She's thirsty. It's her day out, away from mom.” She bit her lip.

Kaye and Mitch had protected Stella like a rare orchid throughout her short life. Kaye knew that, hated the necessity of it. It was how they had stayed together. Her daughter's freedom depended on it. The chat rooms were full of the agonized stories of parents giving up their children, watching them be sent to Emergency Action schools in another state. The camps.

Mitch, Stella, and Kaye had lived a dreamy, tense, unreal existence, no way for an energetic, outgoing young girl to grow up, no way for Mitch to stay sane. Kaye tried not to think too much about herself or what was happening between her and Mitch, she might just snap, and then where would they be? But their difficulties had obviously had an effect on Stella. She was a daddy's girl, to Kaye's pride and secret sadness—she had once been a daddy's girl, too, before both her parents had died, over twenty years ago—and Mitch had been gone a lot lately.

Kaye entered the store through the glass double doors. The clerk, a thin, tired-looking woman a little younger than Kaye, had out a mop and bucket and was grimly spraying the counter and floor with Lysol.

“Excuse me, did you see a girl, tall, about eleven?”

The clerk raised the mop like a lance and poked it at her.

10

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Atall, stooped man with thi

“I do, indeed,” Wickham said, and held out his hand. Mitch shook it firmly. The hand was dry and hard as wood. “Does anybody know you're here, Mitch?”

“Dick snuck me in, sir.”

Wickham appraised Mitch with a slight tremor of his head. “Come over to my office, Mitch,” the congressman said. “You, too, Dick, and close the door behind you.”

They walked across the hall. Wickham's office was covered with plaques and photos, a lifetime of politics.

“Justice Barnhall had a heart attack this morning at ten,” Wickham said.

Mitch's face fell. Barnhall had consistently championed civil rights, even for SHEVA children and their parents.

“He's in Bethesda,” Wickham said. “They don't hold out much hope. The man is ninety years old. I've just been speaking with the Senate minority leader. We're going to the White House tomorrow morning.” Wickham laid his briefcase down on a couch and stuck his hands in the pockets of his chocolate brown slacks. “Justice Barnhall was one of the good guys. Now the president wants Olsen, and he's a corker, Mitch. We haven't seen his like since Roger B. Taney. A lifelong bachelor, face like a stoat, mind like a steel trap. Wants to undo eighty years of so-called judicial activism, thinks he'll have the country by the balls, six to three. And he probably will. We're not going to win this round, but we can land a few punches. Then, they'll lash us on the votes. We're going to get creamed.” Wickham stared sadly at Mitch. “I do love a fair fight.”

The secretary knocked on the door jamb. “Congressman, is Mr. Rafelson here?” She looked right at Mitch, one eyebrow cocked.

Gianelli asked, “Who wants to know?”

“Won't use her name and sounds upset. System board says she's on a disposable cell phone using an offshore line. That's no longer legal, sir.”

“You don't say,” Wickham said, looking out the window.

“My wife knows I'm here. No one else,” Mitch said.

“Get her number and call her back, Co

“Yes, sir.”

Wickham gestured toward his desk phone. “We can link her line to a special scrambler for congressional office communications,” he said, but tapped his wristwatch. “Starts and ends with garbage, and unless you know the key, it all sounds like garbage. We change the key every call. Takes NSA about a minute or so to break it, so keep it short.”

The secretary made the co

11

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY

Stella sat in the shade of an old wooden bus shelter, clutching her book to her chest. She had been sitting there for an hour and a half. The Gatorade bottle was long since empty and she was thirsty. The morning heat was stifling and the sky was clouding over. The air had thickened with that spooky electric dampness that meant a big storm was brewing. All of her emotions had flip-flopped. “I've been really stupid,” she told herself. “Kaye will be so mad.”

Kaye seldom showed her anger. Mitch, when he was home, was the one who paced and shook his head and clenched his fists when things got tense. But Stella could tell when Kaye was angry. Her mother could get just as angry as Mitch, though in a quiet way.