The Devil's Alphabet

we’ve overlooked. My bet is that it’ll be a variant of something we already know about, maybe a bacterial plasmid we’ve been carrying around dormant for thousands of years-something that’s been unable till now to inject its own set of genetic instructions. See, plasmids can’t usually get out of the cell they’re trapped in, so they require-why are you laughing?”

Deke shook his head, still smiling. “This is what I felt like when I talked to Jo. You guys are just-” He fanned the top of his head. “Whoosh.” He got to his feet.

“You asked,” she said.

Not for all that, he thought, but let it pass.

Marla handed back the bag of bottles and the papers. “How’s Donna doing?” she asked. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” he said. Then shrugged. “The waiting is hard.”

“Jo Lynn was right about one thing,” Marla said. “Asexual reproduction would be a lot simpler.”

“Amen,” he said.

Rhonda’s Cadillac was parked in front of his shop. He sighed heavily, then pulled in beside the car.

Rhonda stepped out from the passenger side. Everett, behind the wheel, lifted a hand in hello. “I didn’t see you in church,” Rhonda said. “Donna said you were working. I called, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

“I was doing some errands,” Deke said. He unlocked the bay door and pushed it open. “Come on inside.”

He flipped on the main lights and led Rhonda across the shop floor toward his plastic-draped office area. He planned to put up real walls, but he’d hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Rhonda stopped at the first row of pews. “When you get these done you’ll have no excuse for backsliding,” she said. She rubbed the glossy back of one of the finished pews. “You do beautiful work, Deke. All your boys do.” She looked up at him. “Do you know who the Shakers were?”

“Like Shaker furniture?”

“Your work reminds me of theirs. Do you know why there aren’t any Shakers anymore?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know they were gone.”

“They didn’t believe in sex,” she said. “Not just premarital sex-any kind. That was kind of shortsighted, don’t you think? And they weren’t much good at evangelizing either. So when they started to get old and die off, that was it for the whole religion.” She smiled. “Left behind some beautiful furniture, though.”

“So. You think argos should evangelize.”

“Ha! I wish you could. Just do some preaching and have people start growing. You remember Ernest Angley? TV healer. He’d slap people’s foreheads-whap!-and they’d flop over, quivering like fish.” She hooted in laughter. “I used to love watching him. It was like professional wrestling for Baptists.” She wiped at an eye, still chuckling. “Oh law. Is this sturdy?” She touched a bookcase turned onto its side, one of the few things in the shop low enough for her to sit on.

“Go ahead,” Deke said.

He thought they’d talk in his office, but if Rhonda wanted to talk out here, then fine. He took a seat opposite her on one of the unfinished pews. “You said you wanted to talk about the school?”

“The reverend’s on me again about her Co-op school. She wants to use part of the loan for the high school for it. She called it a ‘branch campus’ of the high school, so it wouldn’t be considered a separate expenditure.”

“Is that legal? The grant’s for one school: the loan’s for one school…”

“Oh, it may be unusual, but I looked into it and it’s legal. I found some other high schools that do it. Usually they’re for tech-ed programs or special ed, but there are also these ‘alternative schools’-for problem students, nontraditional learners. I think the betas would qualify as nontraditional.”

“The whole town qualifies,” Deke said.

“And if we think it will cause problems with the grant, we use the grant for the main school, and part of the loan for the Co-op school. Of course the town council would have to vote on it.”

“Two separate schools,” Deke said evenly. “One for charlies, one for betas.”

“I know, I know,” Rhonda said. “I told the reverend, it’s like a slap in the face to the argos. We’ve been telling everybody that the school is for everyone, that someday the argos are going to have children. But this way it looks too much like two clades grabbing all the money and telling the argos to go hang-and that’s not the way it’s intended. Still, you know how people are. I don’t like what that would do to the town. If I were you, I wouldn’t vote for it.”

Deke leaned back in the pew. Whenever Rhonda told him what he shouldn’t do, he started checking the locks.

“What would make me vote for it, Aunt Rhonda?”

She smiled. “If I were you, I’d want some of that high school money to set up a fund, a fertility assistance fund. Just for argos.”

“Really.”

“If argos don’t have children, why should they pay for a school? I don’t blame them. That’s why every argo couple who wants to ought to be able to go to the fertility clinic at the university.”

“Some of us are already doing that,” Deke said.

Rhonda didn’t pretend ignorance. “And it’s expensive, isn’t it? I don’t have all the numbers, but I figure you’re spending twenty, thirty thousand every time you try to fertilize an egg, none of it covered by insurance. Is that right?”

“You’re in the ballpark.”

“We’re a poor little town,” Rhonda said. “That’s a lot of money even for someone with their own business, and most of your people aren’t even working. Tell them they have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars, you might as well tell them to build a rocket ship while they’re at it. No, they need assistance.”

“This fund. Now that is illegal.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hold up to an audit, that’s for sure. It would have to be unofficial. When we build the school, we’d go through Alpha Furniture for part of the construction, on account of you’re a local, minority-owned business, then we’d-”

“We’re not minorities, Rhonda.”

“Handicapped, then.” She grinned. “Certainly a class of people oppressed by prejudice and bias-whatever the government wants to hear. Work with me, hon.”

Deke laughed. “Jesus, Rhonda…”

“That money goes to Alpha, but a significant amount is for the fertility fund. I can show you how to set this up. The important thing is that you are the administrator of the fund. People trust you, Deke. You’re the Chief. They know you’ll divide up the money fair and square.”

“I know what embezzlement is, Rhonda. And fraud.”

“Pah! We’re talking about a higher law. I’m only suggesting this-and the only way the reverend would go along with it-because you’re an honest man. That’s the only way this would work. We trust you to do the right thing, especially for your people.” She held out a hand. “Now, pull me up.”

Deke helped her to her feet and walked her to the front door. “I’ll come back around to hear your decision,” she said.

“You can hear it now,” Deke said, and Rhonda held up a hand.

“No,” she said. “You go home and think about it. Talk to Donna.” Everett hopped out to open the car door for her. “Oh, one more thing,” Rhonda said. “Paxton tried to climb over the wall to the Home last night.”

“Come again?”

“One of my boys almost shot him. They had to pull him down, and he went wild. Clete had to knock him down a peg.”

“Jesus, Rhonda, Clete?” The boy was a moron and a thug. “What did he do to him?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Paxton’s a little roughed up, but he’s fine.”

“I told you last week,” Deke said. “You can take care of Harlan, God knows he needs it, but Paxton is off limits.”

“Paxton put himself on limits when he tried to break into the Home. I chewed Clete out when I heard what happened. But honestly, Paxton’s acting like a drug addict. Next time he tries something like that they’ll shoot him dead. Besides, there’s no reason for him to break in.” She opened the car door. “His daddy’s gone dry again.”

“Really.”