Broken Mirror (4 page)

***

Light flooded Victor’s eyes, and he blinked. He was sitting against a wall of the hospital. Pain burned his ear. His granfa sat next to him with one arm wrapped around his shoulders, pressing a handkerchief to Victor’s ear, which stung as if it were on fire.

“What happened? How long was I out?”

“Not long at all. You’re fine now.”

“What did I do?”

“It’s nothing to worry about.”

“What did I do? Tell me!”

Granfa Jeff removed the handkerchief from Victor’s ear and showed him the blood soaked into it. “It’s just a scratch. You found one of the shards from the pot and . . . you were distressed.”

A sticky film of guilt coated Victor’s skin. He’d slipped again. Despite all the tricks he’d been taught, he still hadn’t managed to fight off a resonant episode. He was hopeless.

“Remember what this is,” Granfa Jeff said with a hitch in his voice, “a biochemical phenomenon. Your mirror neurons work differently than most other people’s, more excitable and less easily inhibited. That’s all. It’s just the way things are.” Granfa Jeff leaned close and kissed Victor’s brow. “The challenge is to take charge of your perceptions and reasoning. The brain has exceptional plasticity. I believe you can reshape the patterns of your neurons through experience. You don’t need a cure.”

Victor’s stomach felt tight and heavy, as if it were compressing itself and pulling all his other organs down with it. “It scares me,” he said. “Every time I come back, I have to piece together what my body’s done without me. One day, I’m afraid I might
—
”

“You’re different, I know, but don’t let that define you. You are capable of great things,” Granfa Jeff said, smiling. But the muscles around his eyes were tense.

“How long before they lock me up?” Victor asked. “A year? Two? And then? Someday you’re going to be staring down at my hospital bed remembering that I used to be an actual person, not a
—
a
—
” Victor waved at the broken pot, soil, and fern on the ground. “I’m not a plant!”

He pulled himself to his feet, watching his granfa stand with some difficulty, placing his wrinkled hands against the glass behind him and huffing.

Victor said, “There must be a way. You can’t close the whole hospital! What about everyone else?”

“We’ll make arrangements for them at other facilities.”

“What about me? Please, Granfa. Fix me,” Victor whispered.

Granfa Jeff’s lips trembled. “I am so, so sorry, my boy.”

A shadow passed over Granfa Jeff’s features. It was deathly fear. What could scare him so much?

Granfa Jeff gulped and placed a steady hand on Victor’s shoulder. His voice was resolute. “Listen to me. I wish there were some other way. I do. One day you’ll understand. I’m doing this for you own good. Listen . . .” Granfa took a smooth black data egg from his coat pocket and gave it to Victor. “It’s important that you hear me and remember.”

The data egg weighed heavily in Victor’s palms. As he stared at its ebony surface, a strange calm settled on him. He felt in sync with his body, in tune with his environment.

“It will open one day,” his granfa said. “When you’re ready to hear. When it’s safer. For now, you must never let it out of your sight, especially during a reclassification appointment. Focus on mastering your condition, so when the day comes, you’ll be ready. Remember my words: Never surrender. Remember that. Never surrender.”

Victor asked, “Ready for what? What are you afraid of?”

Granfa tried to smile. “One day, you’ll understand. I mustn’t say more than that.” Then he turned and walked stiffly into the hospital, locking the doors and disappearing into the gloom.

Jefferson Eastmore, founder of the American Union’s biotechnology industry, and the man who led a revolution in healthcare technology and innovation, died Sunday. He was seventy-seven.

His death was confirmed by the Holistic Healing Network, an affiliation of hospitals, clinics, and research centers that Mr. Eastmore founded in 1944 to help the American Union and Europe recover and reconcile following the War of the Atlantic. Widely known as the man who cured cancer, Mr. Eastmore is survived by his mother, his wife, his two children and two grandchildren, and many more members of one of the American Union’s most illustrious families. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, following a prolonged illness.

—
MeshNews report, 21 February 1991

Six members of the Eastmore family gathered on a hillside graveyard overlooking Oakland & Bayshore’s City Lake, but only the near shore could be seen through heavy morning fog. Victor stood under a redwood tree that dripped condensation on him, while the rest of his family stood on a bioconcrete path. He was maintaining a precarious sort of calm, but the feelings swirling around him were treacherous and tidal. He tried to concentrate on the landscape and draw comfort from its stillness.

Clusters of headstone-marked graves dotted the hill, but much of the cemetery adhered to the more recent tradition of burial mounds, resurrected after the Communion Crisis and the fall of the Catholic Church. Many of the mounds were simple, unadorned grassy lumps, but the wealthier families had commissioned elaborate arrangements of paving stones, some polished to such a fine patina that they shone even in the weak, fog-blighted sunlight of a February morning.

“Damn press!” said Victor’s cousin Robbie. He looked slim and fashionable in his navy funeral wear. Robbie was all polish
—
round head, slicked hair, and shaved face
—
compared to Victor’s frumpy clothes, wayward curls, and two-day scruff.

Robbie pointed across the lawn to a red and white van with the MeshNews honeycomb logo. A few reporters loitered around the van and fussed with equipment for a site feedcast. Their presence was no surprise. The Eastmore patriarch had a distinguished legacy, and his recent actions were noteworthy as well. The closing of Oak Knoll, the reduction of Holistic Healing Network staff around the world, and the withdrawal of charitable support from a slew of worthy causes had bewildered and disappointed many people. At least, with Granfa Jeff’s death, there were no further opportunities for letting people down.

Petite Auntie Circe lay a hand on her ma’s shoulder and said, “You don’t have to speak with them.”

Victor wished he had his auntie’s skin tone, like paprika-dusted chocolate. Once upon a time, as with all the Eastmores, she would have been called “mixed-race.” Nowadays, people said skin is skin and left it at that. But Victor secretly wanted darker skin like hers; he had more than a touch of his ma’s paleness.

Granma Cynthia sniffed. “I don’t plan to.” She wore a midnight-blue dress with long vertical lines of onyx beadwork.

Auntie Circe primped the black collar poking out of her navy blazer. “They expect a statement. I’ll talk to them.”

Robbie crept close to Victor and whispered, “Don’t
you
go talking to them.”

Victor ignored him. A wooden sign planted in the lawn read “Civic Mausoleum” in a tight curlicue script that had probably been considered stylish when Victor was a boy.

Granma Cynthia turned toward Auntie Circe. “If they ask about his illness . . .” Her lips clamped shut, and she looked at the ground.

Auntie Circe nodded. “Just because heart failure is rare doesn’t mean it never happens. We’re not infallible. But the irony of Jefferson Eastmore succumbing to a usually treatable condition must be irresistible to them.”

Victor’s fa, Linus, took a step toward the van, glowering. “They better watch their words. If Father had been less secretive about his illness, they wouldn’t be so interested,” he said.

“You can’t blame him for protecting his privacy,” Auntie Circe said. “It’s bad enough to lose one’s health. To also lose one’s mental faculties to dementia
—
”

Granma Cynthia whipped her head up. “If you so much as whisper that word . . .” The unspecified threat hung in the air as sure as if she’d pointed a stunstick at her daughter.

Dementia? Victor was surprised. But then he hadn’t seen much of Granfa Jeff over the past few months.

Auntie Circe sighed. “If I deny the rumors, it increases their influence. Don’t worry. I’ll deflect them somehow.”

A group of mourners walked down the flagstone path and filed through the doorway of the mausoleum. The building’s four pillars and covered porch
—
made of white marble or a synthetic impostor
—
reminded Victor of the Southern, Reconstruction-style homes in Carmichael. He shivered.

“It’s time to go in,” Victor’s ma, Linda, said, pointing toward the last of the crowd slipping through the open doors of the civic mausoleum.

Granma Cynthia fiddled with a pair of navy gloves with black piping. Victor’s parents hugged each other. His auntie brushed the shoulder of his cousin’s suit. We’re not mammals, Victor thought, we’re a family of ducks; we all preen and then go waddling forward.

Auntie Circe held up an overstuffed bouquet of violets and white roses, lifted her chin, and said, “All right, everyone, line up, youngest to oldest. Victor, you’re in front. Then Robbie. Linda, Linus, follow behind them. Mother, you’ll want to follow me.”

“You make everything such a chore,” Granma Cynthia quietly scolded, but she took her assigned place.

Auntie Circe waved the bouquet. “You know the burdens of status. We have to do this correctly. People are here to view the survivors as much as the dead.” She nodded for Victor to begin the procession.

Victor took a first step and then the next. Just outside the doors, he sidestepped off the walkway, wetting his black dress shoes on the dewy grass.

“It’s okay,” Ma called. “Come in when you’re ready.”

The other family members continued into the mausoleum and down the aisle, but Circe remained with Victor outside. He turned away from the open door and studied the arrangement of burial mounds, clustered to fit the contours of the terrain, trying to spot where the first Eastmore to be buried outside of New Venice would be laid to rest.

“I know this is difficult for you,” Auntie Circe said.

Victor looked at his wet shoes. “We fought. The last time I saw him, he said I could live a normal life. Ridiculous.”

“I’m sure that was painful to hear, especially coming from him. Father wasn’t well in the end. You have to try to see past his failings.”

“Maybe I could, if Oak Knoll was still there. I thought I would work there eventually, helping people, finding cures.”

“Gene-Us is a great company,” she said.

Victor barely heard her. “He ruined everything.”

“That wasn’t him. It was his dementia.”

“I don’t see the distinction,” Victor said.

Auntie Circe grimaced and said, “Conflict is inevitable. What matters is that you remember your love for each other. I’m sure he forgave you.”

“You don’t get it,” Victor said. “
I’m
still mad at
him
.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to feel,” she said. Her voice was stern, but a slight smile, visible by the barest lift in her cheeks, softened her expression. “There’s a lifetime for you to get over that. But today’s the only day you can say good-bye to him. Remember, death is simply a new start.” She entered the mausoleum.

Strange words. What kind of new start? She couldn’t mean Granfa Jeff would be reborn in a religious sense. Aunt Circe had bizarre, somewhat occult interests, yet she didn’t hold to anything as banal as religion or believe in the afterlife. Maybe she meant the Eastmores would start anew, freed from their overbearing patriarch.

Victor stepped inside. Members of Clan Eastmore, as his granfa had called it, lined up to gawk at the body. The benches on either side of the aisle were more than fully occupied; they were stuffed. A few people turned to look at Victor as he walked by, including his supervisor at Gene-Us, Karine LaTour, but he ignored them. Nervous buzzing in his legs threatened to overtake his whole body. He didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes.

The coffin, thankfully, was high-lipped so that Victor couldn’t see the body yet. He kept the flower arrangement blooming behind the coffin at the center of his field of vision. Two colorful bird of paradise flowers
—always two—
poked from a bunch of white carnations. Each step seemed weighted, and his knees began to shake.

This shouldn’t be happening. Granfa Jeff should be alive and helping Victor deal with his condition. Oak Knoll should be a functioning hospital. How many people were going without care or getting second-best treatments now? Victor should be following in his granfa’s footsteps and changing the face of medicine. It had all gone so wrong.

His parents, cousin, and granma viewed the body and took their seats in the first row. The moment came when there was no one between Victor and the coffin. Victor stepped onto the dais and looked down at his granfa’s corpse.

A familiar face, long, lean, and intelligent, even in death. The skin resembled
café con leche
and seemed lighter than Victor remembered, his freckles more pronounced. He supposed that was to be expected.

But as he looked down at his granfa, he noticed dark circles the color of rotten plums around his closed eyes. His face was marred by splotches
—
irregular reddish-brown stains that were faintly visible under makeup. Victor was sure those blemishes were new. The corpse had only a few lusterless wisps peeking from his white knit death cap. He looked wasted away.

Why didn’t that bother anyone else?

As Victor stared down at the body, the mausoleum began to fill with a rippling pressure, and darkness swirled in front of his eyes like black ash. A blankout, now? They usually came on more slowly.

Victor felt a presence nearby, smothering, and then he went blank.

***

Victor bent over the coffin, hands clenching the dead man’s lapels. The corpse’s ribs flexed under the pressure, and a breath of foul air rose up, smelling of gas and smoke. Like Carmichael.

Mourners’ muttering filtered through the quiet mausoleum.