The Children of the Company (40 page)

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Authors: Kage Baker

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BOOK: The Children of the Company
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Quite a reaction at that, all manner of mortal emotions in that crowded room, and a chorus of clicks and curses as all the kameramen realized they ought to have been recording this. Kameramen aren’t ordinarily caught flatfooted, but they tend to pay more attention in moments of horror and tragedy than at pleasant parties. Now the kameramen belatedly plugged themselves in and Saw Labienus. He nodded just perceptibly, and for their benefit he reiterated: “Yes. This man and this woman have produced the first human child using recombinant DNA, ladies and gentlemen. Will you be permitted to see the embryo? I’m afraid that’s not possible, because, you see, this child was produced
six years ago.
He has already been with us for quite some time.”
Now they really gasped, the mortals, and Geert and Anna clung together more tightly. Labienus took his hands out of his pockets and held them out to the children sitting at his feet.
“Now, boys, I’d like to ask you to stand up and turn around for the cameras. You’re all going to be on the Wire!”
Shyly, awkwardly they clambered to their feet and turned, six little boys in bright sweaters, clutching their toy dinosaurs, blinking at the kameramen. Labienus’s voice rose on a note of command.
“Look at them, ladies and gentlemen! Our own children. Could you possibly tell that one of them was made from recombinant DNA? You couldn’t, could you? Which boy do you think it is?”
A few people (though not his parents) pointed uncertainly at the blue-eyed blond child. Labienus grinned.
“No indeed. No, as it happens”—he put his hand on the shoulder of the black-haired boy—“it’s little Hendrick. The rest of you children may sit down now.”
Little Hendrick’s eyes widened. He turned and stared up at Labienus in horror, turned back and stared at the kameramen recording his image avidly. He started forward through the seated crowd, desperate to get to Anna and Geert.
“Wait!” called Labienus, laughing. “Hendrick, people would like to speak with you!”
“I want to go to see my mommy now,” Hendrick wailed, and reaching her at last he wrapped his arms around her legs and hid his face.
Well! Could anything have been more disarming? Anna lifted Hendrick in her arms and what a heartwarming picture they made, all three, the two
proud parents and their shy little son. Technically I suppose he was no more their son than anyone else’s, of course. A host mother had gestated him (she later sold her story to a journalist) and nobody was ever able to determine afterward just where Anna had obtained the source DNA they’d used.
The boy didn’t look enough like Anna and Geert, or unlike them either, to be able to tell. I had to look at his face now and, I must admit, I’d never have known he was a Recombinant. After all, what was a Recombinant supposed to look like? Nobody had any idea, then. This one was slender and dark, with wide dark eyes and very ordinary features. He clung with his arms around Anna’s neck as she and Geert fielded questions from the press. Labienus had coached them carefully for this, knowing when to fade back and let them tell it in (very nearly) their own words.
Yes, it was all true; Hendrick Karremans was five years old. No, they hadn’t raised him here in Amsterdam City. They’d been living out in the country until a couple of weeks ago. No, he hadn’t attended preschool. Yes, he was going to enter an ordinary kindergarten when the 2093 session started, in two weeks. This was why they had felt they ought to go public with his story at last.
What was his IQ? They declined to state, but added that he was a reasonably bright boy. He liked to paint and listen to music. His favorite food was Apple Puffs. His favorite game was Super Soccer-Man. What did he want to be when he grew up? A fireman! Why hadn’t they revealed his existence to the world before now? Because they had wanted him to have a normal childhood.
Until today
, I thought to myself, watching the child’s face as he peered at the kameramen. If he’d known the truth about himself, he certainly hadn’t had any idea what the truth meant. He was beginning to know now; and how frightened he looked, little Hendrick Karremans.
Though he grew calmer as the room became less crowded. The parents of the human children took them home to bed, the journalists rushed home to their keyboards to get the story out. The kameramen lingered, intent on catching visuals of the child wandering around the emptying room, waving disconsolately at the other boys as they left, going to the buffet and helping himself to chocolates before Anna caught him at it, picking up his dinosaur and making it walk along the wall.
I had found an uncrowded corner and seated myself there. Eventually Geert came and settled beside me, as Labienus escorted the last of the kameramen out with some concluding remarks for print.
“Well! I don’t see how it could have gone any more smoothly, can you?” Geert said happily. “I think we made quite a good impression.”
“I think so, yes,” I replied.
“You’ll be staying over? I see you didn’t bring a bag, but—”
“In the car,” I assured him. “I’ll get it before Michel leaves.”
“Good. We have the guest bedroom ready for you. Michel gave you some idea of your duties?” Geert looked just slightly uneasy. He’d never been a celebrity before.
“Handling the press and your correspondence on a day-to-day basis,” I recited. “Making any arrangements, security or otherwise, that become necessary.” This included acting as the child’s bodyguard, though I felt it tactless to say so in so many words.
Geert nodded. “We’re very grateful to you, really. I didn’t realize there were people who did this sort of thing! Of course, it’ll be very important to make sure that our lives go on just the same as before, as far as that’s possible. That’s just the point of it all, you see? Hendrick is really no different from any other child. Nothing is going to change.”
Fool, I thought. Even the child knew better.
He sidled up to us now, looking troubled.
“Daddy?” He wrung his hands. “I’m afraid we have rather a problem.”
“And what’s that, Hendrick?” Geert turned to him, smiling at his big words.
“Well—there’s one of those bugs in here, it came out of the coat closet and now it’s flying around—I don’t know what they’re called—”
“A fly?”
“No, Daddy, the ones that eat clothes, you know?” How anguished his dark eyes were.
“Moths,” I said.
“Yes, thank you. And they like to get near candles—and we’ve got all these candles in here—and one of them could fly too close and catch fire and then fly all around the room and set it on fire, too.”
Geert roared with laughter at that. Hendrick just looked at him, on the point of tears, I think.
“No, no,” I assured him. “Because the wings would burn up instantly, so the moth wouldn’t be able to fly. You see? It’d just fall harmlessly to the table.”
“But then the table might burn,” Hendrick pointed out.
“True,” I acknowledged. “Let’s see what we can do about preventing that, shall we?” I looked up into the room and acquired the moth. On its next pass through the air above our heads I lunged up and got it.
“Bravo!” Geert applauded. “What speed! But you missed, didn’t you? It was way up there by the ceiling.”
“Do you see it, sir?” I inquired.
“No, but—”
I opened my hand to reveal the moth’s crushed body. Geert went off into gales of laughter again. I think he’d had more wine than perhaps had been quite wise. Hendrick smiled at me.
“And now the moth won’t burn your house down,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he replied gravely. He considered me a long moment. “What’s your name?”
“Nils Victor,” I told him. “I’m here to help your mother and father.”
“Oh. Are you going to live with us?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’ll be nice,” he said. Anna came in then.
“Hendrick, it’s past your bedtime,” she said severely. She was quite sober. “And we’ve still got the food to clear away, Geert.”
“Allow me, please,” I told her, and got to my feet. She started to protest, and then realized she had a
servant
now. How her face lit up.
“If you don’t mind—it’s too kind of you, really. Hendrick, say good night to dear Mr. Victor and we’ll go upstairs.” She held out her hand to him and he went dutifully, but not before pausing to say: “Good night, Mr. Victor.” He knit his brows, and remarked: “You’re different, too.”
Interesting. I smiled and inclined from the waist in a bow. Neither of his parents seemed to notice the remark. Anna took the child’s hand and led him upstairs, as Geert yawned hugely and got up to help me put away the remnants of the buffet. He had just proposed that we open another bottle of wine when there came a polite double knock at the door: Labienus, returning from the car with my bag. I excused myself and went to let him in.
“Good thing I didn’t drive away with this,” he said in a jolly voice, presenting me with the bag. He scanned briefly, to assure himself there were no mortals within earshot, and said in a lower voice: “You’ll be all right here, of course.”
“Certainly, sir,” I replied. But what expression was this on his face? Sympathy?
“Look here … this will be hard for you, I know. Regrettable that he’s a delightful child. This is strictly against regulations, of course, but, to fortify you in your hour of need—you’ll find a few bars of Theobromos in with your things.” He took my hand in his and clenched it briefly.
I was speechless with shock. Labienus was the last man I should have thought capable of gestures of affection. I know from bitter experience how little compassion he feels for the mortals we purportedly serve. I still had a vivid memory of old San Francisco, when I’d seen him straining eagerly to hear the death screams of mortals trapped in the ruins of the earthquake.
“Thank you very much, sir,” I said, finding my voice at last. He smiled again and stepped back out into the night.
“You’re welcome. There are times, Victor, when one needs additional strength to endure what is necessary in order to obtain Company goals. But I’m sure you’re far too experienced a field operative to need to be told that! I’ll be in touch in the morning.”
And he ran lightly down the steps and away, under the cold stars.
The official press conference the next day was much more difficult. Word had got out, as we’d intended, and the press knew what to expect, what pointed questions to ask. Fortunately Labienus had prepared answers to all of them, but Geert and Anna were still flustered. They really had not expected any negative reaction to what they’d done.
I was tempted to blame them, but it was easy to understand their ingenuousness. They’d lived cloistered with Hendrick night and day for five years. He seemed the most lovable and ordinary of children to them. How could anyone object to his existence?
The religious leaders of the world had various condemnatory answers for them, of course, including the Ephesian Church, which formally demanded to know why Anna had not created a daughter instead of a son. Fortunately Anna was a practicing Ephesian, and her pious answer—that she’d left the choice of the baby’s gender up to the Goddess—mollified them somewhat. We put out a certain amount of Ephesian-slanted publicity, too, depicting Anna as bravely defying the paternalist laws of the world to exercise her reproductive rights, which helped.
More difficult to deal with were all the tedious little laws Anna and
Geert had so blithely disregarded. No, they hadn’t registered Hendrick’s birth with the proper civil authorities: how could they, when they’d meant to keep his existence a secret until the press conference? So of course he had no papers and no legal identity, and that meant dealing with a hostile bureaucracy.
And, no, he’d never had vaccinations of any kind. He didn’t need them. He was engineered to be disease-free, with an antibody system much more aggressive and powerful than ordinary mortals had. He’d never been ill a day in his life! So why should there be any need to give the child inoculations now, especially as he was afraid of such things, like any little boy?
The answer, of course, was that he would not be permitted to attend kindergarten until he’d had the inoculations. They were required by law. Moreover, the kindergarten Anna and Geert had chosen for Hendrick now refused to take him, and in fact filed suit against the Karremans family for lying on the application form about his legal status. No use to explain that they hadn’t thought they were lying; as far as they were concerned, Hendrick was really their son, and wasn’t that what mattered?
Naive idiots. We did our best, Labienus and I, at defusing the problems caused by superstition and ignorance, but really the mounting lawsuits—filed seemingly by everyone, anyone who felt they might have reason to suspect that Hendrick’s creation infringed on their civil liberties—and bureaucratic stalemates were another matter entirely. I don’t know what we’d have done if the situation had continued.
We took the most outrageous of the lawsuits, the one demanding Hendrick be euthanized, and had a field day with it: posters of Hendrick’s sad little face with the words CONDEMNED TO DIE!! screaming below, and—even more effective—posters of Hendrick’s picture side by side with that of Anne Frank, and the same caption. I think it might have done the trick, actually, for within a few days of that second poster the Anne Frank Kindergarten publicly announced that it would be happy to accept Hendrick Karremans as a pupil.

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