Clay's Ark p-5 Page 9

  "Guessing, maybe," Rane said.

  "Oh no, he does know. He's called it right four times so far. Now women come and ask him." "But . . . but, Lupe-"

  "Stop for a moment," Lupe said. Then to the boy, "Okay, nino. Back out to play. Take some nuts."

  The boy leaped down from her lap, trotted on all fours to the china nut dish on the plain, homemade coffee table. He took a handful of nuts, stuffed them into the pocket of his shorts and zipped it shut. He seemed to have no trouble using his hands. They were smaller than Rane thought they should have been, but he was less clumsy with them than a normal child would have been. He was certainly much faster than any normal child, probably faster than most adults. All his movements were smooth and graceful. A graceful four-year-old.

  He stopped in front of her-beautiful child head, sleek catlike body. A miniature sphinx. What would it be when it grew up? Not a man, certainly.

  "I don't like you either," Jacob said. "You're fat and you smell and you're ugly!" "Jacob!" Lupe stood up and started toward him. "Vayase! Ahora mismo! Outside!"

  Jacob bounded out the door. No, human beings did not move that way. How had any disease made such a creature of a

  child?

  "He's telling the truth, you know," Lupe said. "You do look fat and odd to him, though you're not. And you smell . . . different. Also, he couldn't miss how much you were repelled by him."

  "I don't understand how such a thing could happen," Rane whispered.

  "It's the disease, I told you. We don't even have a name for it-the disease of Clay's Ark. All our children are like Jacob." "All . . . ?" Rane swallowed. "All animals? All things?"

  "Shit!" Lupe said. "You're worse than I was. You should be more tolerant. He's a little boy." Rane stared at her pregnant belly.

  "Oh yes," Lupe said. "This child will be like Jacob too, just as my son is. Beautiful and different. And, chica, your

  children will be like him too. The disease doesn't go away. It just settles in and stays with you and you pass it on to strangers and to your children."

  "Or you get treatment!" Rane said. "What the hell are you doing sitting in the middle of the desert giving birth to monsters and kidnapping people?"

  Lupe smiled. "Eli says we're preserving humanity. I agree with him. We are. Our own humanity and everyone else's

  because we let people alone. We isolate ourselves as much as we can, and the people outside stay alive and healthy- most of them."

  "Most," Rane said with bitterness. "Most for now. But even now, not me. Not my father or sister. And what about you? You don't belong here either, do you?"

  "I do now," Lupe said. "Before, I was a private hauler. You know. Good money if you survive. My truck broke down all the way over on I-Fifteen, and Eli caught me outside. When I realized what he had done to me, I thought I would

  bide my time and kill him. Now, I think I'd kill anyone who tried to hurt him. He's family."

  "Why?" demanded Rane. "If you really believe he's the cause of this sickness-and you know he's the guy who kidnapped you . . ." Rane shook her head. "Didn't you have a husband or anything back in the real world? What about your business?"

  "I was divorced," Lupe said. "I lived in the truck on the road." She paused. Her voice became wistful. "I miss the road. I

  almost got killed more times than I like to think about, but I miss it."

  Rane listened without comprehension. A woman who could be nostalgic for work that kept nearly killing her could probably make any irrational adjustment.

  "I didn't have anybody," Lupe said. "We lived in a cesspool. My parents' house got caught in a gang war, got bombed. One of the gangs wanted to make a no-man's-land, you know. They needed to put some space between their territory and their rivals'. So they bombed some houses, torched others. They got their no-man's-land. My parents, my brother,

  and a lot of other people got killed. My ex-husband, he's a wino somewhere. Who cares? So I was alone. I'm not alone

  here. I'm part of something, and it feels good. Even Orel. There was a time when I carried two guns plus the truck's usual defenses-and defensively, my truck was a goddamn tank-all to fight off people like him: bike packers, car bums, rogue truckers, every slimy maggot crawling over what's left of the highway system. But they're not all as bad as I thought. Orel isn't. Take away the gang and give him something better and he turns into a person. A man."

  Rane listened with interest in spite of herself. She could not understand Lupe's interest in a man like Ingraham but she was beginning to respect Lupe. Rane liked to think of herself as tough, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion she could not have survived Lupe's life. She had never been alone, never been without someone who would help her if she

  could not help herself. Now none of the people who cared about her could help her. Her father, her sister, two sets of

  grandparents, and on her mother's side, a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Only a few of them were close to her, but every one of them could be counted on to come running if a member of the family needed help. Now, the only ones who knew of her need needed help as badly as she did.

  PAST 13

  Gabriel Boyd died.

  Death was a relief to him, an end to more than physical suffering. Alive, he was frightened, confused, full of self- loathing for feelings he could neither control nor understand.

  He had had to be put to bed because he was no longer able to keep his balance. He overcompensated, first for walking up and down steps, then for negotiating the irregularities of the ground outside, finally for walking over a level surface.

  He could crawl, but nothing more.

  As his sensitivity increased, he began to react with terror to slight sounds and cringe at the slightest touch. Most food- even the smell of food-nauseated him, though he was always hungry. Eli fed him ground, unseasoned raw meat, fresh vegetables, and fruit. He ate a little of this and kept it down.

  His eyes had to be covered since any slight movement frightened him. His movements, even in bed, were either exaggerated and awkward or fine and incredibly controlled. He could no longer feed himself. Then he could no longer eat or drink even if fed. On the Ark, he would have been fed intravenously. But no member of the Ark crew who reached this stage had survived, reinfection or no. Eli and a weeping Meda cared for him, then for his wife, whose symptoms also worsened. He lost control of all his bodily functions. He urinated and defecated, spat and drooled. His body twitched and convulsed and sweated profusely. He probably shed enough disease organisms to contaminate a city. On the fourth day following the onset of symptoms, he died -probably of dehydration and exhaustion. On life support, he would have lasted longer, but the end would have been the same. Eli was glad there were no facilities for prolonging the old man's suffering.

  Meda's mother died a day later as did her two brothers and a tiny, perfectly formed nephew born three months too soon. Meda herself never really sickened. She became more and more despondent as her family died, became almost suicidal, but her physical symptoms remained bearable. She was learning to use her enhanced senses or at least tolerate them. And in spite of all the horror, every night and sometimes during the day, she went to Eli or he came to her. Without discussion, he moved into her room. She did not understand how she could touch him with the disaster he had brought to her family happening all around her. Yet she found comfort with him. And, though she did not know it, she gave him comfort, eased his guilt simply by continuing to live. They leaned on each other desperately, and somehow held each other up.

  Her father realized what they were doing before he died. He first cursed her, called her a harlot. Then he apologized and wept. He seized Eli's wrist with only a ghost of the great strength he should have possessed.

  "Take care of her!" he whispered. It was more a command than a request. Even more softly, he said, "I know it might have been me or one of her brothers if not for you. Take care of her, please."

  To Eli's own surprise, he wept. He was trapped in a vise of guilt and
grief. He was alive because of the old man. Gabriel Boyd had given him a home and thus kept him from drifting into a town and spreading the disease. It was his

  grandfather all over again-a stern, godly old man who took in strays. A dangerous practice these days-taking in strays. He worried about Meda. Worried that he might not be able to take care of her-that she might die in spite of her apparent

  adjustment. That would make him a complete failure. That would drive him away even if her sisters-in-law lived. In his

  mind, only her living would ease his questioning of his own humanity. He had stayed to save her. Now she must live or he was a monster, utterly evil, completely without control of the thing that made him monstrous.

  She lived. He stayed with her constantly during the period when she might try to take her life. Later when the organism took firmer hold, suicide would be impossible. Now, he watched her.

  Most of the time she hated him at least as much as she needed him. She lost weight and her clothing sagged on her. She gained strength, and when she hit him, it hurt. Guiltily, he did not strike back.

  She helped him wash the corpses of her parents, her brothers, and her nephew. For him it was a penance he would not permit himself to avoid. For her it was a good-bye.

  They wrapped the bodies in clean sheets, took them to a place she had chosen. There, together, they broke the ground, dug the graves. The sisters-in-law did not help, but they crept out to stand red-eyed over the graves as Eli read from

  Lamentations and from Job. They cried and Meda said a prayer and it was over.

  Later, Meda tried to comfort her sisters-in-law. They were older than she, but she had a more dominant personality, and they tended to defer to her-except in one important way. They preferred to be comforted by Eli. Their drives were as much increased as Meda's and they had no men.

  Meda understood their need, but resented it. Even when she hated Eli, she did not want to share him. Her possessiveness seemed to surprise her, but it did not surprise Eli. He would have been equally possessive of her if there had been another man on the ranch. He saw to it that Gwyn and Lorene were reinfected until he was certain they would live. Then he avoided temptation as best he could until Meda was comfortably pregnant-and her pregnancy did comfort her. She did not understand why. She had been isolated and sheltered by her parents, brought up to believe having a

  child outside marriage was a great sin. But her pregnancy relieved tension she had not recognized until it was gone. It also relieved tension she had recognized all too clearly.

  "I'm going to sleep with Lorene," Eli told her one day. "It's her time."

  Meda rubbed her stomach and looked at him. "I don't want you to," she said. He could see that she meant the words, but he heard little passion behind them. She had some idea what he was feeling, and she knew positively what Lorene was feeling. She wanted to hold on to him, but she had already resigned herself to his going.

  "There are no other men," he said unnecessarily.

  "Will you come back?"

  "Yes!" he said at once. Then more tentatively, "Shall I?"

  "Yes!" she said matching his tone. She put her hand to her stomach. "This is your child too!"

  She did not know how much he wanted to be a father to it. He had been afraid she would do what she could to make that difficult.

  "We need men for Lorene and Gwyn," she said.

  He nodded. He was glad she had said it. She would share the responsibility this time when they infected two more men. He had known all along what had to be done. He had not thought the women were ready to hear it until now. The other deaths had seemed too fresh in their minds. Without meaning to, he had enjoyed the harem feeling the three women gave him. When he realized how much he enjoyed it, he wanted to look for other men at once. He found any feeling that would have been repugnant before his illness, but that was now attractive, to be suspect. He would not give the organism another fragment of himself, of his humanity. He would not let it make him a stud with three mares. He would make a colony, an enclave on the ranch. A human gathering, not a herd. A gathering headed where, God knew, but wherever they were headed, since they were not going to die, they had to grow.

  PRESENT 14

  Lupe and Ingraham shared Rane with a newcomer introduced as Stephen Kaneshiro. No one explained what he was doing there. He offered to help with the wall painting when Lupe and Ingraham got out the paint and brushes-real brushes-but Rane did not get the impression he lived with them. He touched her from time to time as Lupe and Ingraham did. After a couple of hours of this, she stopped cringing and trying to avoid their fingers. They were not hurting her. There was no more scratching. They were endurable.

  Eventually the reason for Stephen's presence became clear to her.

  The painting had been going on for a while when Lupe asked her if she wanted to help. She shook her head. She knew the request might really be a command, but she decided to wait and see. Lupe simply shrugged and turned back to the wall she was working on. The two men were on their way to work on the outside of the house. Stephen stopped, looked at her, then at Lupe. "Do you suppose she'll be this lazy when she has her own house?" he asked.

  Lupe smiled. "That one isn't lazy. She's sitting there cooking up an escape plan."

  Startled, Rane turned to look at her. Lupe laughed, but Stephen seemed concerned. He put down a can of paint and came over to Rane. He was a small, brown man, so heavily tanned that he and Rane were about the same color. He was clean-shaven and long-haired, his black hair pulled back and loosely bound with a rubber band. Under different circumstances, she would have welcomed attention from him, even been a little overwhelmed. He was as thin as everyone else on the ranch, but he was also one of the best-looking men Rane had ever seen. Somehow, his thinness did not detract from his good looks. Yet he had the disease. She braced herself against the renewed offense of his touch.

  But this time he did not touch her. He clearly wanted to, but he held back. "If you'll come with me," he said, "I won't touch you."

  "Do I have a choice?" she asked.

  "Yes, but I'd like you to come. I want to talk to you."

  Rane glanced at Lupe, saw that she was paying no attention. Stephen did not seem fearsome. He was her size and not afflicted with any twitches or trembling. She sensed none of Ingraham's quick temper behind the quiet, black eyes. More important, she was learning absolutely nothing sitting in Lupe's living room and being stroked like an animal

  whenever someone thought of her. She needed to look around, find a way out of this place.

  She stood up, looked at Stephen, waiting for him to lead the way.

  "We're going outside," he said. "I'll show you around while we talk. Don't run, though. If you run, I'll have to hurt you- and that's the last thing I'd want to do."

  There was no special warmth in his voice when he said these last words, but Rane was suddenly suspicious.

  Breaking his word, Stephen took her arm and led her out. She did not mind, really. At least this time he had a reason to touch her.

  He took her to a corral where two cows and a half-grown heifer were eating hay. Far off to one side, there was another corral from which a bull stared at the cows.

  "This place is full of babies and pregnant women," he said.

  "We need plenty of milk." The heifer came over to them and he rubbed its broad face. "You can get a disease from drinking raw milk," Rane said.

  "We know that. We're careful-although we're not sure we have to be. We don't seem to get other diseases once we have this one."

  "It's not worth it!"

  He looked surprised at her vehemence. "Rane, you'll be all right. Young women don't have anything to worry about. It's older women and all men who take the risk."

  "So I've heard. That means my father could die. And, young or not, my sister will probably die sooner than she would have without you people. And me. What do I do if I live? Give birth to one little animal after another?"

  He turned her around so that sh
e faced him. "Our children are not animals!" he said. "We are not interested in hearing

  them called animals."

  She pulled free of him, not at all surprised that he let her. "I never cared much for the idea of aborting children," she said, "but if I thought for a moment that I was carrying another Jacob, I'd be willing to abort it with an old wire coat hanger!"

  She had managed to horrify him-which was what she had intended. She was completely serious, and he, of all people, had to know it.

  "You know they planned to give you to me," he said softly. "I suspected. So I wanted you to know how I felt."

  "Your feelings will change. Ours did. The disease changes you." "Makes you like having four-legged kids?"

  "Makes you like having kids. Makes you need to have them. And when they come, you love them. I wonder . . . What's