What could she say? What was there to say?
He stared at the dying sun. “Tospia must have known! She was supposed to tell the twins. ‘Daddy invented a weapon, children. Daddy didn’t want to lock it away in a laboratory somewhere, where it might be lost or forgotten or misused—’”
“Why lost or misused, necessarily?”
“In Bernesohn’s time, the government was …”
“Mostly non-Fastigat,” she supplied bitterly. “Your great-grandpop didn’t trust us ordinary people.”
Leelson went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Actually, what he did makes a certain kind of sense. There were still things he needed to find out on Dinadh. He knew he might be killed. He had to provide for that eventuality. He didn’t know what the virus would do to its host. He had no way to test it. So he put half in one zygote, half in the other, depending on Tospia’s pride in her posterity to keep the twins well guarded and protected. If he wasn’t killed, he’d be back on Central long before the twins grew to reproductive age. If he didn’t get back, he knew the twins wouldn’t reproduce with one another! We don’t even reproduce with first cousins very often, so it would be at least two generations before the virus could be reunited. Perhaps Bernesohn had learned enough about Tahs-uppi to know they’d be needed by then….
“Tospia must have known. I wonder who forgot to tell whom?”
Lutha buried her face in her hands. Had Tospia really known? Had Nitha Bonetree known? Had Lucca Fineapple, the religious nut, Lutha’s grandma, had she known? Had Mama Jibia known? Unlikely in the extreme. Lutha’s mother hadn’t known, and neither had Lutha. Five generations back to Paniwar Famber, and nobody had known.
“How did the strain stay pure?” she asked from a dry throat. “It would have been diluted.”
“Not if it were carried quiescent in the reproductive cells. A virus is just a machine for making more viruses. We’re still carrying around viral fragments from prehistoric times. They merely inhabit, reproducing themselves from generation to generation but not … doing anything.”
“Until it met up with its other half,” she murmured. “But there’s only two in my family, Yma and me. And there’s only one of you. Surely that was depending a great deal upon fate.”
This line of thought didn’t delight him, obviously. He scowled. “Bernesohn assumed there’d be lots of descendants from both sides, well spread out among the rest of humanity. Bernesohn himself was prolific. He had half a dozen Fastigat mates and children by all of them; he’d have expected the twins to produce a horde.”
“But that didn’t happen. There was only you and me. Our meeting was accidental. No one planned it. Almost too neat, Leelson!”
“Too neat to be believed, Lutha. Bernesohn no doubt built in some kind of attractant. Something that would gain effectiveness in each generation.” He frowned at the sea. Dirty. Unhappy.
“You’re filthy,” she suggested, wanting desperately to be let alone. “Why don’t you at least wash yourself!”
He wandered off toward the water and began stripping off his clothes. She stared into the sunset, trying not to think of anything at all. Until now she’d regarded their affair, Leelson’s and hers, as the summit of her life, the single most exciting and marvelous thing she had experienced. From the day he’d come to her door, she’d kept a journal, just to memorialize the wonder of it, so the episodes would never fade, never dwindle. Since he’d left, night after night, she’d reread it, reliving their time together. Certain expressions, certain words, certain actions. They’d been made for each other, she had told herself.
Yes. Well. So they had. Not quite as she had imagined. It had not been the inscrutable stars that had brought them together. Instead they’d responded to one another like any two moths or frogs or beetles. Leelson was right: Bernesohn had made sure of bringing his great-grandchildren together. He’d built in some attractant. Perhaps a pheromone, growing more potent with each generation, some chemical lure that wafted for great distances, bringing them both to that library. A time bomb in their reproductive cells, set to go off!
How dared Bernesohn Famber do such a thing!
“Don’t be angry with him,” said Leelson, standing naked at the water’s edge, following her thoughts as though she had spoken them aloud.
“Leave me alone, Leelson.”
“Think of Saluez’s face, Lutha. Look at your wrist. Bernesohn was trying to save the human race.” He entered the water, scooping it over his shoulders and body in ruby showers, watching her all the while.
She looked at her wrist. Healed, of course, By Leely, her son, their son, no one’s son. Leelson was right. Bernesohn’s task, as he’d seen it, was to save the human race. To create a magic bullet that would ricochet around among humanity. One that would kill off the enemy and heal the afflicted at the same time. Or perhaps the healing power was simply a side effect. Serendipity.
Tospia probably had known. Maybe Paniwar and Tospiann had been told, as soon as they were old enough to understand it. Which was probably after Paniwar had fathered her great-grandma. “You can’t screw around like this,” his mother had no doubt said. “You’re too important. You carry the secret weapon. You’re the possessor of our heritage, our survival.”
“Don’t romanticize either,” Leelson cautioned her, standing tall as he stripped the water from his golden head.
She could barely keep from screaming at him. “Please, Leelson. We’ve done our genetic duty. Now can’t we at least leave one another alone.” It took all her willpower not to weep hysterically.
“I don’t think he invented a way to turn it off,” he said helplessly, returning to her with arms open.
She tried not to respond.
