Anna To The Infinite Power (15 page)

He had told no one except Anna about the scholarship, so he said nothing.

Obviously agitated, his mother said, “Well, come into the kitchen. I’m having a cup of coffee. There’s a pitcher of milk ready if you want some.”

Without bothering to set down his violin case, he followed her to the kitchen. “Where’s Anna?”

“I sent her on some errands, because I didn’t want her to hear this.”

Rowan tensed. He watched his mother pour a glassful of the powdered milk she’d prepared and set it on the small breakfast table. “Hear what?” he asked.

She sat down before a half cup of coffee and absently motioned him to another chair. Without taking off his jacket, he slid into the seat she indicated and laid down his violin case. Fearful of what was coming, he waited in silence.

She stared down into her cup for a long moment, then said, “I think there’s something wrong with Anna.”

What was she talking about? Anna had taken her regular physical only last week and had said nothing about anything wrong. “What do you mean?”

“Dr. Barrett called me early this morning. You know, he’s looked after Anna ever since she was born. He knows about her -- I mean, about the experiment. He says there’s some unexplained change in her cell makeup.”

Rowan paled. “You mean he thinks she has cancer?”

“To tell you the truth, Rowan, I don’t know what he thinks. If it was cancer, I’m sure he would have told me. After all, most cases are curable these days.”

“But cells--what else could it be?”

“I don’t know. And that’s what worries me. I could tell he was very concerned. He wants to take some more tests. Under the circumstances, I thought it only fair to tell him that I had to tell Anna about herself and why. Just in case that has anything to do with what’s happening.”

“What kind of tests does he want her to take?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He asked me if she was behaving strangely. I said no.” She frowned as if considering her answer doubtfully. “I wouldn’t say she was behaving strangely. Would you?”

He said quickly, “Of course not.”

“Why, the two of you seem to be getting on so well together now. And you know yourself, you never did before.”

How blind his mother could make herself, he thought, overlooking the fact that that in itself might well be strange. Nevertheless, he went along with her. “I think she’s maturing--and for the better.”

“Yes, I felt so, too. She’s so much more helpful than she used to be. Still, there are her grades . . .” Her voice trailed off. At length she added, “Don’t say anything to your father until I find out what this is all about.”

He nodded. Was she worried about Anna, he wondered, or only about what his father would say? But surely there was nothing seriously wrong with Anna. She was much too young to have something like cancer.

He heard the front door open and the sound of Anna’s quick steps along the hall. Smuggler appeared from someplace to bound into the kitchen with her. “How did you know I had cat food?” she said to the kitten as she placed a grocery bag on the table. “I think I remembered everything, Mom.”

“Thanks, dear.” Sarah Hart got up and began unloading the bag.

“Rowan, why do you have your jacket on?” Anna asked.

“Because I just got in this minute and I haven’t had time to take it off.” He tried to keep the worry from his voice, but she must have sensed something.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

He saw his mother glance at her sharply before he said, “Of course not.”

Apparently that satisfied her. “I’ll feed Smug while you put your things away. Then come into the living room. There’s something I want you to hear.”

He took a few minutes to hang up his jacket and place his violin case in the bedroom. When he joined Anna, she was seated at the piano, riffling through a stack of sheet music. “I found something I like in these pieces that came with the piano.”

Grandmother’s music. She had deliberately avoided calling it that, he was sure. Probably because she no longer considered any of his family her relatives. The piano had come to them after his grandmother had died. Everyone said she’d played exceptionally well and that he and his father had inherited their musical talent from her.

Anna found the music she’d been looking for and placed it in the holder on the piano. “Listen to this.” As she began playing, he sat down on the sofa and stretched out his long legs. Although he was in a gloomy mood, he promised himself to keep his feelings to himself. Because of his worries about Anna he was experiencing a strange mixture of emotions that made him want to lash out at someone, and he was afraid that it just might be at her.

The music she had chosen was unfamiliar to him. Without any coaching from him, she was handling it rather well. Of course, it was an uncomplicated melody, a piece of popular music from his grandmother’s day. He was gratified to hear how much feeling she was putting into her playing these days. When she finished, he said, “That was really good, Anna.”

The compliment seemed to embarrass her. “It’s an easy piece to play. And I like it. Don’t you?”

“It’s kind of old-fashioned.”

She shrugged. “Maybe that’s what I like about it.”

“What’s it called?”

“ ‘Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet’--from some old movie, I think. How about trying it on your violin, Rowan? We could play a duet.”

He asked me if she was behaving strangely. His mother’s words flashed through Rowan’s head. Anna was behaving the way he’d always thought she should behave, but that made her different from the earlier Anna, strangely different. He says there’s some unexplained change in her cell makeup. Rowan was terrified for her. His fear made him draw back into himself. “I must not think about it,” he told himself. If he let his feelings overwhelm him, he might have nothing left for his violin, nothing to bring to the next play-off recital, the big one, the last one.

“I can’t get into anything like that now,” he said brusquely, and got up from the sofa. “Besides, I should be practicing. The last play-off recital is on February twenty-seventh, which doesn’t give me much time. But you go on with what you’re doing--it sounds good.” As he started from the room, a quick glance at her told him that he’d hurt her feelings, but he kept right on going anyhow. In a moment he heard her begin the same melody again. Now it sounded achingly sad.

He hurried to his room and slammed the door behind him to obliterate the sound. I think there’s something wrong with Anna. He stood beside his desk, unseeing, then brought his fit down hard on the wood. It was unfair. Unfair!

“I just don’t understand it. The new tests show even more change,” Dr. Barrett said. He leaned back in his office swivel chair and studied Anna. He was a restless little man who always flew about as if he were trying to prove he could manage three patients at the same time, as well as a fourth on the telephone. Today Anna felt she had his undivided attention.

“It’s happening, isn’t it?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The experiment’s gone haywire. I’m going to self-destruct.”

“Now, Anna, I know your mother told you that you have unusual--well, beginnings--but that’s no reason to jump to silly conclusions.”

“Then what’s wrong with me?”

Talking in his usual hurried way, Dr. Barrett went through a lengthy speech full of medical jargon that meant nothing to Anna. At one point he broke off and said, “You follow me?” When Anna shook her head, he sighed impatiently. “Well, it really doesn’t matter. The thing is, Anna, we don’t understand what’s causing certain changes in you, but we have to find out.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. I want you to go to San Clemente Island for observation.”

“Why there?”

“Because the government has experimental laboratories there. They’ll be able to run some more involved tests. Shouldn’t take more than a week, I’d say. I’m sure they’ll be able to pinpoint the problem.”

They? No, they. Was there no way to escape them? And the laboratories? Were those the ones where she’d had what Dr. Barrett called her unusual beginnings? Probably. Now they were recalling her like some defective automobile. “I don’t want to go anyplace,” she said.

“Oh, now, Anna, just think of it as a vacation.”

“I don’t want them touching me! I won’t let them!” she said shrilly. Hadn’t they done enough damage creating someone who was turning into a monster? Surely that must be what was happening to her. She was changing. Every part of her was changing, inside and out. She looked down at her hands. Would they grow fat and grotesque? Or would they shrivel up and rot away? What was happening to her?

As if he had read her mind, Dr. Barrett leaned forward, took one of her hands in his, and patted it. “There’s nothing to fear, Anna. Why some of the world’s best medical and scientific minds are at San Clemente. They’ll put you to rights in no time.” Anna drew her hand from his. “I don’t want to go.”

He said simply, “But you must.”

It was just as she’d thought. She had no choice. It was not for her to say what she would or wouldn’t do. They owned her. She felt as if she had always known she would have to face them. Suddenly she was very tired. Weak. What did it matter if she had to go to San Clemente Island? Something dreadful was happening to her. Probably she was dying. And the horrifying part of it was that no one really cared. Not even Rowan.

Anna stretched out on the chaise lounge in the private patio off her room. High brick walls cut off all sight of the grounds on the island, as well as the cool ocean breezes. Anna thought ruefully of Dr. Barrett’s words.
Think of it as a vacation.

The buildings in which she was housed were called The Cottages. Her room had no hospital atmosphere at all. In fact, it could have been a room in some pleasant seaside motel, looking out at a patio full of greenery. She could even hear the distant sound of ocean. But she was not on vacation and she was not in a motel. She was on government property where virtually every corridor and every door was marked restricted. She could leave her locked room only for exercise in the gym, and only at prescribed times, and with an attendant. Although there was a phone on her bedside table, she could receive no calls from the mainland or make any.

Letters were the only form of communication allowed her, although the attendant informed her she must in no way mention anything about the island. “I’m terribly sorry,” she’d said, “but you’ll have to leave all of your letters open for the censor. There’s some highly secret work going on here. We have to be sure you aren’t disclosing something of a sensitive nature.” Who’d want to write letters under those conditions? Anna wondered. No, she was not on vacation. She was in a sort of prison. Sure, she could have scrambled over the brick wall any time she wanted to, but where was there to run? Certainly no one would be foolish enough to try to swim the long distance to the mainland.

On the day she’d arrived, an attendant had met and rushed her along to The Cottages. Anna had only time to take in a quick impression of the whole operation. Many buildings. More than she would have supposed. Offices, labs, she guessed. One building very tall. A helicopter on the roof. Two people near it, carrying someone on a stretcher. A hospital, no doubt. Other buildings that looked like dormitories. In all, a small city.

The place frightened her. First, because of what it was--a location where people in science experimented on . . . whom? Other people? Animals? Once that would never have bothered her. Now she felt sickened. There was still another reason. This one, not seen but sensed. She could feel it all around her, in the melancholy sound of waves pounding the shore, in the chill morning mists that settled over everything, a strange yet familiar feeling that beyond the high patio wall outside her room something, someone, waited.

She had already spent five days on the island. With all of the tests she had taken, she had yet to meet anyone she would have labeled one of them. The people who had examined and tested her were merely polite and efficient doctors and nurses. She had especially wondered if Dr. Henry Jelliff, whose name had appeared in her school file, and who was surely one of them, would make an appearance. But, no. Anna had no doubt that he received extensive reports on her condition, but he obviously had no intention of making himself known to her. She found herself growing more and more alarmed.

Now she put down the book she was holding rather than reading, then lowered her chair and lay back, eyes closed. She thought of Dad and Mom saying good-bye to her just before they’d put her on the hydrofoil. Dad, self-conscious, trying to encourage her. Not succeeding. Mom, always the scientist, telling her that it was a great privilege to get into San Clemente, that she must keep her eyes open because she would undoubtedly see some fascinating things going on.

What neither of them knew was that Anna had overheard them talking about her only a couple of days before, the day after Dr. Barrett had told her where he planned to send her. She had come in late that afternoon. They were both in the living room and the tone of their voices told her something was wrong.

“I told you so,” Anna heard Graham Hart yell. “I told you no good could come of trying to play God!” Obviously he had just found out about Anna’s problems.

”But, Graham,” Mom said, sounding subdued, “San Clemente has some of the world’s most brilliant minds. I’m sure they’ll be able to do something to reverse whatever it is that’s going on.”

“And if they can’t?”

Silence. After a moment, Mom sobbing out the words, “Oh, Graham--I’m sorry. I never guessed -- ”

Anna had not waited to hear more. She’d slammed the front door to pretend she’d just come in, then hurried to her room.

But it was not Mom and Dad who made Anna feel so desolate now. It was Rowan. For a while she’d believed he was starting to like her. Then a light went out. Or so it seemed. His good-bye sounded like someone seeing off a casual friend.

She had turned to him last, saying, “Don’t forget to feed Smug.”