Page 2 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
"Need to know only. I'm in the dark here." Cummings looked down as he traced a circle in the dirt with his shoe. "They did say plural, Hazelwood. Kids. Don't know how many."
Fuck. Not much he could say to that. If they needed him to findkids, plural, it was bound to be bad. Guild meant they were variant kids, too, maybe kidnapped, maybe lost, maybe trapped somewhere dark and small and…God. Damien concentrated on breathing slowly, on staying present. "Driving?"
"Just until we get to the ornithopter parked down the road."
"Sandwiches?"
"In the vehicle." Cummings caught his hapless partner under the elbow and dragged him onto the bank. "Go do what you have to. We'll wait in the snow-crawler."
Damien closed his eyes and heaved a careful breath, willing the terrible emotional whiteout away. He couldn't even call it rage or panic. These sudden overloads shorted out every neuron, left him dangerously detached, as if his humanity had been peeled off and stuffed in a trunk while he stood shivering in nothing but naked instinct.
God, he hated it.
The understanding he had with Cummings over the past five years at least made these summons easier. The first few times he'd had to argue with agents who didn't understand and even had a fistfight with one that resulted in them dragging a bound Damien in, hissing and spitting.
Both the Guild and the Federal Crimes Bureau had enough bright minds to figure out that he was more useful in a cooperative mood.
He cleaned off the ice chisel and returned it to its place on the rack by the door before he started his rounds. Once inside the cabin, he tugged a few invisible wrinkles out of the perfectly made bed and made sure his moccasins lay perfectly aligned on the floor, parallel to the headboard. Then he began the circuit. Three steps from the door to the stove. Check to see if the propane was off. Two steps to the solar-powered fridge. Check for perishables on the nearly empty shelves. Four steps from the fridge to the root-cellar door. Unfasten the latch and fasten it again. Repeat twice. Three steps to the chest of drawers. Open the top drawer to be sure everything important was in place. Vid chip of his mother, two antique leather-bound books, a palm-size German shepherd made of yarn, neatly folded socks, all in the proper spots. Four steps back to the door, always parallel to the wall.
Start again.
Sometimes when the agents had upset him, it could take as many as ten circuits before he felt calm enough to leave. This time, it only took six. If they ever decided to uproot him completely, to force him to move back to the city, he would have to reestablish the routine somewhere else, but as long as he had a stable place that was his, he could move about the world with this spot as its center, this spot he had grounded and rendered safe.
He changed his ratty work coat and gloves for a more respectable set and closed the door behind him. There was no lock, no need for one up here, and no need to take weapons. If they had him traveling this time, they would supply such things.
Cummings moved over to give him room on the bench seat and he slid in, grateful at least for the warmth.
He glanced down at the brown paper sack between them. "Roast beef?"
"With horseradish. I'm not senile yet, Hazelwood."
Damien opened the bag and let the scent hit him, savoring it a moment before he seized the top sandwich and sank his teeth in with a grateful moan.
"You're a good man, Cummings."
"Nah. Just a clever, manipulative one."
Wirth drove, apparently happy to be in the front seat far away from the feral variant. The snow-crawler lumbered down the hill, away from the peace of solitude and safety of seclusion.
Guild Center.
Ugliest building in all of Raleigh, the damn thing shot up over the skyline, blunt-nosed and obnoxious, like Galactus's flash drive. The rest of the buildings barely cleared the elevated zipways, but the fucking Guild always needed to make astatement. Blaze shoved through the revolving doors, too impatient to wait for them to spin around on their own like a good citizen, and stopped in the lobby to stare up at the giant holographic imager on the back wall, the one the size of half a football field that played Guild propaganda crap in a continuous loop.
Looks like they got a new production company, at least.
A beautiful double helix in soothing blues and greens turned slowly up on the screen. A lovely, throaty female voice purred the accompanying narration.
In the late thirties, scientists developed a new nucleic acid, a new building block for life itself. Fredamine, named for its inventor, Dr. Uma Frederick. This simple carbon molecule with its equally simple purpose—to bond with adenine in specific gene sequences—was designed to alleviate a wide spectrum of neurological disorders.
The shining nucleic acid onscreen joined with darker cousins. Rousing music swelled as the sad, dark strands split, forming new DNA ladders with beautiful shimmering colors. Blaze tilted his head in an unconscious attempt to match the tilt of the new DNA image. The concept had always disturbed him. All the information for the human body and possibly the soul lived in this twisted ladder that no one in his right mind would possibly climb. He would have preferred a straight road, but it figured that the human map was all curled and twisty. The narrator's voice returned—
By 2055, this little molecule had conquered disease after disease: Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, cerebral palsy, Lou Gehrig's…
Onscreen, cartoon silhouettes straightened from their canes, rose from wheelchairs and hospital beds, and ran to hug their families.
A miracle for so many. But fredamine wasn't done with us. It had one more set of miracles to give.
A fetus floated on a black background, its hue changing from pink to gold as the model of the fredamine molecule entered its body.
