Brother Termite (7 page)

“Call the governor–what’s his name?–at home.”

“All right,” she replied doubtfully. “Werner Hassenbein.”

“What?”

“The governor’s name is Werner Hassenbein. You should at least know his name if you’re going to get him out of bed. You know, it’d be better if this could wait until morning. The Germans have been real agreeable. No sense pissing them–”

“Just place the call.” Reen sat behind the uncluttered rosewood expanse of his own desk.

“Videophone hookup?”

“Yes, yes.” He waved her out.

As she stalked from the room, he heard her mutter, “Your funeral,” and he wondered what she meant by that and if he should be afraid of her, too.

A few minutes later Natalie’s voice came over the intercom: “Hassenbein’s on hold.”

Reen swung around to his credenza and tapped a command on the AT&T unit.
REFUSED VIDEO SEND
flashed across the screen.

“Governor Hassenbein?” Reen asked.

A mumble came over the receiver. “Yes?”

“I have just fired Hans Krupner.”

“What?” The governor was awake now.

“I must ask you to arrange a replacement for him immediately.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause. “All right. Nothing scandalous, I hope.”

Reen thought hard, wondering what the Germans would consider scandalous. Invading China? “He just wasn’t ... pulling his weight.”

“Ja, ja.
All right. Yes. These things happen.”

The intercom buzzed. Natalie said, “Call on line two.”

Reen ignored her. “When can you send a replacement?”

“Well ...” Hassenbein said judiciously, as though he were counting the days on his fingers.

Natalie: “Emergency call, sir.”

The governor said smugly, “We have, you know, a pool of good applicants to choose from.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Let’s set up a time. I can send one of my ships to get you. There is a great deal I wish to talk to you about. The tanks you have sent to Russia, for example–”

“What?” Hassenbein blurted. “What tanks?”

A burst of static from the intercom. “Quen on line two, sir. He says there’s a medical emergency in West Virginia, and you’re to pick up the line immediately.”

“What ta–”

Reen punched the red square at the edge of his phone, neatly clipping the end of Hassenbein’s question. Hand shaking, he pushed the pulsing light on two. “Quen?”

The Cousin Caretaker’s voice was frantic. “Angela is sick, Reen-ja. Very sick. You must come to West Virginia at once.”

“She–”

“Now,
Reen!” Even over the phone lines, Reen could hear the hysteria in his Cousin’s voice. “Come quickly.”

Reen was out the door and halfway across the anteroom when Natalie called, “Governor Hassenbein’s still on hold. What should I tell him?”

Cold terror rose in Reen’s chest like water from a broken pipe. Distantly he wondered if the little death was coming for him as it had come for Tali.

“Sir?”

He turned blindly to Natalie, for a moment wondering where he was and what he had been about to do.

“Sir?” she asked in a hushed voice.

He remembered. Angela. Angela needed him. “Tell him anything,” Reen gasped as he ran to the ship.

QUEN MET
met him at the door of the children’s house. “Oh, Reen-ja,” he said, wringing his hands. “She is very sick.”

Reen brushed him aside, ran past a clump of wide-eyed children entranced by a puppet show, and burst through the doorway to the female dormitory. Angela’s bed was empty.

Some part of him had always known it would happen. The combination wouldn’t work; the mixture of genes would be unstable. A few years of life, and some unseen mistake, some fatal error in planning, would kill her.

“Reen-ja,” Quen said, his voice thick with pity.

Shut up!
Reen’s mind screamed. If Quen didn’t speak, Angela would still be there. She would come running to him the way she always did. Reen stood frozen, one hand on the door, his disbelieving eyes on the barren bed, the vacant pillow, the way the late afternoon sun cast a river of brass across the empty floor.

Quen touched Reen’s sleeve with a claw. “Reen-ja,” he whispered sadly. “She ...”

Reen’s mouth widened until he felt it had opened a tunnel through his chest. He should have known never to fall in love with anything so fragile. “Shut up!”

In the living room the high silly voice of the puppet hushed. The children, startled by the shout, began to cry.

Warm human fingers grasped his shoulders. “Sir,” Mrs. Gonzales said quietly. “She’s in a room by herself. We’re keeping her away from the other children.”

Reen found himself being pulled around. He tripped over his numb feet. Behind Mrs. Gonzales’s doughy bulk stood an assembly of curious, large-headed children and Quen, his black eyes wide.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Gonzales asked, steadying Reen with a strong hand, a hand made for cooking gingerbread and wiping children’s greedy faces.

Reen didn’t have the strength to answer.

“It’s just the flu, sir,” she told him in her soothing voice. “Here. Let me take you to her. She’s been asking for you.”

Reen let her lead him down the hall and through a door. On a twin bed Angela lay inert and unmoving, her huge eyes closed.

“Her fever spiked,” Mrs. Gonzales was saying. “We had a little convulsion and it alarmed Quen, but she’s all right now. We gave her an alcohol rub, and her temperature’s down.”

Reen walked through the fog of Mrs. Gonzales’s voice and looked down at his daughter. Her face was pinched. There was a hectic flush high on her cheeks: twin spots of clown color. Her mouth was open, her breathing labored.

“Seizures happen to small children with high fevers sometimes.” Mrs. Gonzales’s calm voice brushed at Reen’s sticky anxiety. “It’s frightening to watch, but nothing to get alarmed about.”

Tentatively, Reen touched his daughter’s arm. The skin was hot and dry, as though banked coals were baking her from the inside out. Quen was right: His daughter was very sick, and Mrs. Gonzales, as all humans eventually did, was lying to him.

Angela’s eyes opened a slit.

“Your daddy’s here, Angela,” Mrs. Gonzales said. “See? Your daddy came to see you.”

“Daddy.” Angela grabbed Reen’s hand. He lightly squeezed back, fearful of injuring her. Suddenly her face drew up into a mask of misery, and she was crying. “Hurts. It hurts, Daddy.”

Reen whirled to Mrs. Gonzales. The caregiver was smiling and checking her watch. “She seems to do well on Tylenol. Let’s give her another child’s dose and some orange juice. Her throat’s been bothering her.” Mrs. Gonzales made her way from the room, shooing away the inevitable crowd of children.

Quen walked in. “She believes it is a minor human disease, Reen-ja, but I am not so certain.”

Reen turned his back on Quen. If Mrs. Gonzales said it was a minor disease, that was the explanation Reen chose. He would hold that explanation and wring sugared comfort from it.

But Quen was a Cousin, and Cousins weren’t given to lying. And he was a scientist; he should know. As Reen gazed at his daughter, sour anxiety came oozing back.

“Hurts,” Angela said in a demanding pipe, as though she expected her father to send the pain away as easily as he might order a junior senator to leave the room.

“Mrs. Gonzales has gone to get you Tylenol,” he told her helplessly.

Mrs. Gonzales came in with the Tylenol bottle and a glass of orange juice. “Here, sweetie.” She put two tiny pink pills on Angela’s tongue. “Raise her head,” she told Reen.

Putting a hand behind the child, Reen gently lifted. Mrs. Gonzales slipped the end of a straw into the child’s mouth. Angela took a sip but then wrenched her head away. Orange juice dribbled onto her pajamas. “Hurts.”

“Children always get a little cross when they’re sick,” Mrs. Gonzales said with a forbearing smile. “Come on, sweetie. Just a little more.”

“If it hurts her ...” Reen said, unsure. Angela pressed her face protectively into his arm.

Mrs. Gonzales ignored him. “If you drink your orange juice, honey, you can have some ice cream.”

Pouting, Angela turned to Mrs. Gonzales. When the caregiver put the straw back into her mouth, Angela drank almost half.

“Good girl. Quen? Why don’t you go get Angela a scoop of ice cream. Chocolate. She likes chocolate.”

With a glare, Quen left.

Mrs. Gonzales pulled Reen aside. “Quen may be the geneticist,” she said firmly, “but I’m a pediatric RN. I know children. Angela’s going to be just fine.”

Reen wanted to believe her. But when Quen brought the ice cream, Reen noticed that Angela ate only a few spoonfuls before becoming weepy and demanding again. Mrs. Gonzales put a palm to the child’s brow. Then she took Reen to a rocking chair in front of the window and set the blanket-wrapped Angela on his lap.

“Hold her,” she said.

Reen cautiously slipped his arm under his daughter’s head. Unlike Tali, nothing moved in Angela’s mind, neither dark, hateful creatures nor ghosts of the Community.

“If her fever climbs,” she said, “call me.”

Angela filled Reen’s arms with warmth. Outside, a gunmetal sky was sifting a fine snow that obscured the gray winter hills. “Snow,” Angela whispered before lolling her head against her father’s shoulder and drifting into an uneasy sleep.

Awkwardly, wishing he were more practiced at embraces, Reen rocked his daughter as the day blurred into night. On his lap Angela twisted and whimpered. In the main part of the house Reen could hear the sporadic laughter of children, could smell dinner on the stove.

It was dark when Quen made his way quietly into the room. “Reen-ja?” he whispered. “Will you be staying the night?”

Reen shifted his weight to ease a cramp in his leg. Angela stirred restlessly. “Yes.”

Kneeling at Reen’s side, Quen studied the little girl: “It is interesting that she called you Daddy when she hadn’t before.”

“Yes,” Reen said faintly. “Interesting.” He’d never demanded that she love him, never encouraged her to call him anything other than his name, but the fact that in her misery she had acknowledged him as her father brought a raw ache to his throat.

“There are niches,” Quen went on. “Not so many Cousins as in Washington, but enough to sleep well.”

A cold draft from around the windowpane caressed Reen’s arms and face. “I will stay here in her room.” He gently wiped the glaze of perspiration from his daughter’s forehead. Her skin was like and yet so unlike his own: gray, but supple and moist as a human’s. Her curled hand was a marvel of engineering. Miraculous, dusky eyelashes shadowed her cheeks.

“But Reen-Ja ...”

“One night won’t hurt me.”

In the darkening bedroom there was a quiet sound, the sound of Quen’s sigh. “Should I stay with you?”

From his tone Reen could tell that Quen hoped his offer would be refused. “Go sleep.”

“If you tire, Cousin ...”

“I know,” Reen said curtly.

After a moment Quen rose and padded away, leaving Reen holding his daughter. In the glow of the outside lights the snow drifted, settling on the gentle curve of the ship, on the branches of the trees. Several times Reen felt himself dropping off to sleep, but then some unexpected movement of the snow or of the wind-nudged trees would wake him.

Around midnight a cramp seized his right arm, and he carefully moved Angela’s head to his left shoulder. At three in the morning, by the luminous numbers of the digital clock on the bedstand, the snow stopped. In the hush a raccoon, foraging for an early morning meal, trundled through the pool of light between the house and the ship, the wind ruffling its thick fur. Pausing just at the edge of the light, the raccoon turned its bandit eyes toward the window where Reen sat in silent vigil over his daughter.

Reen dozed and was roused by the low, mournful hoot of an owl. As dawn broke vague and blue, he stretched his shoulders to ease the ache in his back.

At six-thirty Mrs. Gonzales came in the room and stood in the pink sunrise from the window, looking down at Reen and his child. Angela’s smooth face was still. Reen couldn’t remember when the feverish twitching of her body had ceased.

“Her fever’s broken,” Mrs. Gonzales whispered. “She’s fine now.” Reaching down, she lifted Angela from Reen’s arms. The child muttered in her sleep.

“We’ll put her in her own bed. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, but when he stood up, he nearly fell. He was weak. There was a hot ache from his neck to the middle of his back. His left leg was numb. Holding on to the wall for balance, he limped out to the common room where Quen and Thural were waiting.

“Reen-ja,” Thural said anxiously. “You didn’t come to the niches.”

“I know.” Reen tried to bring his Cousin’s face into focus. “Will you sleep now, Reen-ja? A few of us will go back with you to make a Community.”

Reen lifted his hand in negation, then let it drop as he forgot what the gesture had been for.

“Reen-ja. You will become ill yourself,” Quen said sharply.

Thural said, “He becomes stubborn, and there is no way to deal with him. Let me take him to the Cousin Place at Andrews. Once he smells sleep he will go into a niche soon enough.”

Reen knew he should be irked by what was said, but the moment the words were uttered, he tried and failed to grasp them. They drifted from his clutch like leaves in a stream.

“Come, Reen-ja.” Thural grabbed Reen’s sleeve with his claw. Obligingly, like a large, dimwitted dog, Reen let himself be led out of the children’s house to the ship.