Prototype

rather than educated.

“What is this all about, here?” Clay asked. “What is it you want out of those two?”

And when Valentine began to rhapsodize about conception, and breeding stock, and what might the offspring be like parented by not one but two Helverson’s subjects, it seized Clay’s imagination with a dread so palpable he really feared he might be ill.

Helverson’s times two? Helverson’s squared? Or might the result be a mutation fouler still, never before seen, never anticipated, grotesque potency distilled through the generations.

“You’d do that to some kid deliberately?” he whispered.

What a horrible thing, what a perfectly horrible thing, and he recalled those times with Erin when they had lain in bed and the thought of siring a child was the worst act he could think of, the worst crime he could commit upon innocence, even upon a world as corrupt as he knew theirs to be.

“You’re a monster. You’re a complete monster.” It might have stung the man, for while he didn’t flinch, he cocked his head to one side almost as if he didn’t comprehend. It might have hurt him… but it was so hard to tell.

Clay stood to turn his back on the man, nearly stumbling on his way to the sliding balcony door, where he leaned against the glass and stared at the snow beginning to fall. When he heard Valentine behind him he knew if the guy so much as rested a hand on his shoulder, that would be it, he would go for his eyes.

“No. I’m not,” was all the man said, all he did. “I’m just the first.”

But there Clay stayed, Valentine leaving him be, an hour or more passing as life went on too slowly, as Ellie and Daniel came back and seemed at truce, and one of them asked, “So what’s wrong with him?” but went unanswered. They began to smoke from her stash, peace pipe maybe, and Clay watched the leaden sky go darker with the first gloom of dusk.

Then he heard something he had never expected to hear, not in this place, with all four of them as isolated from one another as they were from the world at large:

He heard the doorbell.

* * *

Adrienne’s gaze fell naturally upon Clay as soon as they were let in. Fifteen feet away, across this penthouse apartment, there was true pain in what she saw: Oh, he’s worse, he’d not weathered the trip north well at all. Only three days had passed since she’d seen him, but he appeared thinner, paler, his eyes burning gray hollows. The only genuine color in him came from the savaging he had given the side of his face: the red badge of desperation.

Only then did she truly notice the others.

She thought, oddly, of their brief discussion about Salvador Dali, wondering if Sarah did likewise, for here was surrealism: encountering four faces so wholly similar, staring back. It was academic to see pictures; visceral to enter a home and see a quartet in which individuality appeared sacrificed to a prevailing stigma.

She caught her breath. See them, and one could find it too easy to believe in a purpose underlying their births. Given the suspicion and hostility in at least some of those eyes, perhaps it was precisely as Clay had said. There was something eerily more than human in all those streamlined faces turned her way, like lizards catching sound of a threat.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” the girl asked. Ellie. Her name, Timothy had said, was Ellie.

“No doubt.” Sarah took another step, hands fisted into the slash pockets of her down vest. “There’s no other place like this, is there?”

Across the room, their elder rose from the chair in which he seemed to have been brooding for a while. Patrick Valentine had a glare that could cause ulcers.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Adrienne lifted her hand toward Clay, framed against a glass door, a skyline, a thickening snowfall. “I’ve been Clay’s doctor since September.”

“Rand. Oh, right.” Valentine spared Clay a perfunctory glance, then regarded her with dismissal. “How proud you must be. He looks wonderful.”

She ignored him, or tried, because he was obviously the sort of man who would miss nothing, who understood what would hurt and how to exploit it, a man who knew where all the nerves lay. Don’t listen to him. There was only Clay here, she decided, and spoke his name but nothing more, for everything had abandoned her. All logic, all persuasion… gone.

But maybe it was better this way. Maybe she belonged mute. She needed to say nothing for Clay to see how far she had come, how low she had fallen. He would realize why they had come — that no matter what he did, she still refused to let hope die.

It should have been a simple decision for him. He obviously had come here and found more unhappiness than answers.

And yet…

He hesitated.

“Do we need to talk,” she said, finding resolve, “or would that even do any good any more?”

“It’s not that simple,” said Clay, and why did he insist on making it so difficult for himself? Couldn’t he for once just admit the mistake and redress it by taking the quick way out? But no, he couldn’t bring himself to make it that easy.

Sarah caught her eye then, Sarah sad and emptying right there beside her. It’s us, Adrienne realized. It’s the way he sees us, to him we must seem so complete together, that to be with us magnifies every bit of stability and unity he’s lacking. He’s reminded of it every moment he’s with us, and he doesn’t see the disagreements or the squabbles, but even if he did it might make everything even more genuine, because he’d realize they never last long…

It’s us. We’re as much at fault as anyone.

Sarah fumbled blindly for her hand, ever intuitive, sensing that sudden failure in her. She took a step forward to pick up the slack.

“As long as you never see the sun,” she said, with a smile — if anyone could turn his awful pallor into a gentle joke it was Sarah — “would you like to come back with us as a consultant? I’ve got this wild idea for part of my thesis, I want to go looking for cave paintings in old shut-down factories, and you’re the only expert I know.”

Clay’s face softened, wistful, transported to another day. He looked almost hopeful. “Where are you going to start?”

Sarah shrugged. “South Dakota, maybe? If you think it’s worth the trip. I figure it’s worth a look.”

Adrienne didn’t immediately catch on. South Dakota? Then the memory fired: Where Erin went home to, and if Sarah was the one to talk Clay down from here instead of her, fine, more power to her, whatever worked. And it appeared that she really might, for he looked upon Sarah with as much trust as she had ever seen him grant.

None of which was lost on Valentine. He would look for these weaknesses as a rule. Soft underbellies were made to be torn.

“And what then, Clay, a week from now, a month?” he said. “Is she going to marry you? You think you’re going to set up some happy home in the mountains? Raise normal babies?”

Adrienne stared. Whatever’s passed between the two of them… Valentine doesn’t understand it at all. He can’t read it right because he’s probably never had a friend in his life.

“If you think anything even remotely like that is going to happen for you,” Valentine said, “you’re living in a fantasy world that’ll destroy you when you get burned out of it.”

Bristling, Sarah appeared to have had about enough. “You’re the last man on earth to lecture anyone on fantasy worlds,” she told him. “You’re the little man behind the curtain in Oz.”

Against the near wall, Ellie stuttered into laughter, and the other man — Adrienne wasn’t even sure which one this was — turned on her with alarm, Shut up, shut UP! in his taut features. Adrienne had almost made a similar observation, but to Sarah alone, discreetly. How ironic: All day Sarah had been the one to preach caution, to fret about Adrienne angering this Machiavellian tyrant.

“I’ll take my chances,” said Clay, and moved toward his coat.