adult stem cells start acting like embryonic stem cells-it’s unprecedented. Yet none of you even seem to wonder how this happened to you. The only one of you who seemed at all curious is-” He felt sure she was about to say “dead.” She waved a hand. “Never mind.”
“Are you talking about Jo Lynn? Did you know her?”
“Of course I did. I was her doctor.” There was something too casual in her voice.
“You were friends.”
Dr. Fraelich said nothing.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” he said.
“And I didn’t see you.”
“I came in-” He didn’t want to say “late.” “Well, there were a lot of people. All those betas. I met her daughters, and their father.”
The doctor frowned. “Tommy’s not their father. The betas reproduce through parthenogenesis.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Though he’d never understood exactly what the word meant: sex without sex, he supposed. “I just thought that the beta women-some of them, right?-had already had sex before the Changes, and that they’d stored up the sperm. Or the eggs. Later they released them when-what?”
The doctor was shaking her head. “Nobody’s thought that for years. They had to toss out that theory with the first guaranteed virgin birth. There was a girl who was eight when she changed, with no evidence of previous sexual activity. She had twins when she was thirteen. Definitely no sperm involved.”
“But there are male betas,” Pax said.
“There are no ‘male’ betas, not really. Only men who contracted TDS-B during the Changes. Males who caught the B strain died at much higher rates than females. The men who survived, chemically and hormonally are practically female. TDS didn’t make them grow ovaries, but it halted their sperm production completely. Penises shriveled, testicles receded. They’re sterile and impotent.”
“Jesus,” Pax said. He felt a twinge of sympathy for Tommy Shields. “Okay, no male betas, but there’s sex with other people-”
“What other people?”
“The other clades,” he said. “Or, uh, skipped people.”
He felt his face flush. The doctor looked at him oddly. “Clades can’t breed with the unchanged, Pax. And they can’t interbreed either. We’ve known this for a decade. Charlies breed with charlies, and argos-well, we’re not sure what’s happening there.”
“But if there’s no sperm at all, then how are they-how does it work? And don’t say, ‘When a beta loves herself very, very much…’”
The doctor didn’t laugh. “No one knows. All women are born with all the eggs they’re ever going to have. The Changes allowed beta women to fertilize those eggs somehow. Or maybe they’re like aphids, born pregnant. Parthenogenesis happens in sharks and lizards and who knows how many other species, but nobody knows how it works exactly. It’s just a Greek word for ‘We don’t know what the hell is happening.’”
Paxton sat back, rubbed a hand across his face.
She said, “You look… lost.”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” He stood, thinking of Jo’s daughters. For some reason he was disappointed. When he was sent away from Switchcreek, Pax had thought that the girls were his, or maybe Deke’s, or maybe both of theirs. And later, when people on the news started talking about parthenogenesis, he’d held on to the theory that maybe, just maybe, he was still the father. It was stupid, he knew.
He said, “I better get back to bed.”
Dr. Fraelich tapped the pen against the desk. “We’ll do one final checkup in the morning, but I think you’re good enough to go home. I’ll call the Chief and tell him you’re ready for pick-up.”
“Wait a minute-Chief?”
“Deke. I’ll call Deke.”
“Oh, right.” He had a dim memory of someone else calling Deke the Chief. “Try to get some sleep, Doc.”
The next morning Pax heard a deep argo voice vibrating through the walls, and thought, Deke. He sat up quickly, and his eyes blurred with tears. Jesus, tears? What was that about?
He quickly got dressed and made his way to the reception area. He felt stronger than yesterday but still shaky. He’d finally eaten, finishing off a granola bar and a bottle of orange juice that Dr. Fraelich had brought him.
In the reception area Deke leaned on the counter talking to the doctor, a collection of orange prescription bottles on the surface between them. Doreen, the charlie girl who’d bathed him, sat at a desk behind the doctor, staring down at an open magazine, pretending to ignore the conversation. She looked up as Pax entered and quickly looked down again, embarrassed.
Deke abruptly stopped whatever he was saying to the doctor and said to Pax, “Hey there, sleepyhead.”
Pax smiled faintly. “Howdy, Chief.”
Dr. Fraelich seemed upset, the blotches on her face angrier. She picked up the bottles and put them into a plastic bag.
Pax said, “Do you need my insurance or something? I remember signing a lot of papers.”
Deke looked at Dr. Fraelich, and she said, “You’re covered. Courtesy of Aunt Rhonda.”
“Really?” Pax said.
“Just drink plenty of water,” Dr. Fraelich said to him. Whatever familiarity they’d developed last night had been packed away.
“That’s it?” Pax said. “Three days of drug-induced coma and all I get is water?”
“A coma would have been a lot quieter and a lot easier on all of us,” she said. “You’re detoxing. Eat some fruit if you want. Just stay away from male charlies of a certain age.” She took the plastic bag of medicine and walked away before he could respond. Doreen kept her head down.
“That was… weird,” Pax said. He felt like everyone was moving at double speed, flashing signals he couldn’t detect.
“Come on, man,” Deke said. “Let’s get you home.”
Home. Which was where, exactly? Sure as hell not Chicago. He knew now that it had never been his home. He’d spent ten years marking time.
Pax followed Deke outside. It was midmorning and humid as a greenhouse. Gray clouds hid the top of Mount Clyburn, promising rain.
“You look whupped,” Deke said. “You need help getting in? You’re walking like an old man.”
“I got it. I’ve just been smacked upside the limbic system.” Pax pulled open the door and after a false start managed to hoist himself into the cab. He fell back in the high bucket seat and gazed up through the roll bars at the gray clouds.
“Thank you, man,” Pax said. “For coming to get me. For everything.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, seriously. Thank you. You’ve always been-you and Jo-you were the only people I…” His voice trailed off.
“It’s okay,” Deke said. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I was inside his head, Deke.”
“Whose head?”
“At the church. I was next to him in the water, and I saw what he saw. He was hallucinating about the church, the way it used to be. I could see it.”
“You were doing some hallucinating yourself, P.K.”
“I don’t regret it happening, though. Okay, the hangover is hell, but I’m glad it happened.” He rolled his neck to look up at the man. “My father loves me, Deke.”
“Of course he does. He’s your father.” A strange thing for him to say, Pax thought, considering what an asshole Deke’s father had been.
“You don’t understand,” Pax said. “I
“You’re still high,” Deke said. “Just a second.” He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a cell phone pinched between thumb and index finger. It was a bulky, old-fashioned thing that looked tiny in his hands. He held it in front of him, not even trying to fit it to his ear. “This is Deke.”
