And with this son given him by destiny, he wanted to lean in until Daniel squirmed, his rough stubbled cheek scraping Daniel’s smoother one as the kid smelled the coffee on Valentine’s breath. He would slap his cupped hand down over Daniel’s crotch and squeeze just to the point of pain.
Would a pimp do that?
“Pimps make money,” he told Daniel instead. “You’re
“Right,” Daniel said. He shrugged off Valentine’s hand. “You don’t plan on… you know… watching us go at it, or anything like that. Do you?”
And that really tore it, such an insinuation beyond the pale of reason. Valentine clenched his jaw and dragged him by the arm halfway across the terminal’s walkway, thumped him against the wall by a row of telephone carrels before Daniel really knew what was happening. They drew passing glances, but Valentine could not have been more oblivious. Face-to-face, then, nose-to-nose. Heavy sunglasses or not, Daniel Ironwood could not hide his sudden trembling with fear.
“Is that why you think I flew you here?” Valentine whispered into the tightly impassive face. “I’m not a voyeur, I’m not a pervert. I didn’t bring you here for my pleasure — I can’t feel it in the first place. I brought you here to do a job, first, and maybe learn something. Now, are you going to keep that in mind?”
Nothing.
“Or are we going to have to go through frequent reminders?”
“I’ll remember,” said Daniel, and when they stepped away from the wall, Valentine noticed that he kept a half step behind; the farther they walked, the more he appreciated the ambiguity in that. Back there, Daniel Ironwood could either be playing the subservient or plotting to club him across the back of the head.
A fine specimen, Daniel Ironwood.
Maybe there was hope for the future after all.
He took Daniel to Charlestown so he could shower and clean up, dump off his luggage, anchor his life for the next couple of weeks. They grabbed a quick dinner at a pub a few blocks from the house, and by then evening was chilling into a hard, crisp night. It was time. Introductions were in order.
They drove back across the Charles and up to the penthouse where he kept Ellie, and it generally went well. No mad burst of passion and fireworks, no instantaneous surge of lust. But he preferred a low-key beginning, had hoped for it, because if their hormones locked into immediate and earnest sync, what would prevent them from
Like ungrateful children.
So there they sat, in the living room, television and stereo playing in jarring discord. Ellie nervously flipped through channels for the first thirty minutes, then seemed to calm herself. Valentine had taken a sniff of her on arrival, of that razored violet hair, and it appeared that she’d washed it today. Good girl. Daniel was at first no calmer than Ellie, sat behind the big marble table as if it were a fortress, chain-smoking himself into a fuming cloud.
No mention was made of the real reason for their coming together, but its undercurrents charged the air all the same. Valentine watched with viper’s eyes, watched their body language toward each other, made note of their eye contact — fleeting at first, then held longer. They spoke of doctors, psychiatrists; an unusual turning point, but… whatever works.
“The last doctor they made me see, he told me why I turned out so screwed up,” said Daniel, deadpan behind his glasses. “He said I’d been molesting my inner child.”
Ellie frowned for a few moments, unsure whether or not to take him seriously, finally laughing when she saw him break his veil and grin crookedly toward the floor.
“Are you ever going to take those damned glasses off?” she asked. “Patrick, make him take those things off.”
Daniel took care of it himself, drawing them slowly away from his face, as if performing an amputation.
“Okay,” Ellie said, “okay. I just wanted to be sure you had eyes. You didn’t really seem quite human.”
Daniel shrugged. “The jury’s still out.”
Shaking her head, Ellie narrowed her eyes, smiled the aloof and vicious smile that came to her in odd moments, moments that to Valentine felt to stretch much longer, somehow, for in them she seemed older than he, and far more mysterious than he had ever suspected.
“The jury can be bought,” Ellie said, pointing at Valentine. Pointing at his heart. “Just ask him.”
He wasn’t used to the phone ringing before he woke in the morning. When it came to associates he generally initiated the calls, and wrong numbers were rare.
Valentine dragged the receiver to his ear and croaked out a simple “What.”
“I have a number but I don’t know a name,” came a voice, the voice of a stranger, “so I don’t know if you’re the one I need to talk to or not.”
“About what?”
From the other end came a slow breath. If he didn’t like the answer, this conversation was terminated. Feds — he wouldn’t put it past them to bug his phone, call him up when they knew he’d be groggy. Call it entrapment.
“Chromosome twelve.”
Valentine sat up, scooting back against the headboard while scrubbing the sleep from his face. This was long-distance; he could hear the miles of humming lines between. Could it be…?
“How did you get this number?”
“You mailed it to Denver. Does that narrow it down?”
Valentine broke into a broad smile, a morning rarity, as the heavy burden of sleep began to flush from his system in a surge of excitement. This would be how Magellan had felt upon sailing past the known boundaries demarked by the maps of his day.
“Clay Palmer,” he said with genuine pleasure. “It’s good to speak to you, finally.”
“Are you going to tell me your name?” Clay asked.
“It’s still too early for that. You understand. I have to protect myself. Nothing personal.”
“I’m coming your way,” said Clay Palmer, with all the inborn inevitability that Valentine knew had made them what they were, had made them cogs in a greater machine that would one day finally get around to meshing. “I’m coming because all I have left is to see if what I have ahead of me is even worth trying to get to, and I don’t know if you can tell me, but I don’t know anyone else who could even try. So maybe you’ll tell me who you are when you know I’m calling from a local phone.”
Sitting in bed, his first impulse was to say no, bad timing. He had a new houseguest, after all, and eugenics on the mind. But reconsideration was swift, as soon as he remembered an evolutionary given that did not escape the human species:
Sperm production was boosted higher in competing males.
“I’ll look forward to it,” he said, and let it be all the invitation that Clay Palmer was likely to need.
PART THREE/AND DARWIN LAUGHED
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!… The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
