The Devil's Alphabet

“Sure.”

“And they loved you. Why? They had no choice. Especially your mother. When she was in labor, a part of her brain was flooded with chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. The same flood occurred every time she nursed you. Other parts of her brain-the areas responsible for cravings, goal-oriented behavior, ecstasy-were also swamped in dopamine. Over time-”

“What does this have to do with the chubs?”

“Chubs is crude, Paxton. Pay attention. Over time, that association-baby equals pleasure-becomes burned into the brain. There are a couple of structures on each side of the brain called the caudate nuclei, each about the size of a cocktail shrimp. That’s where behaviors get turned into habits, and skills become things that are second nature, not even conscious. With each little hit of baby-ecstasy the brain makes that bond a little more permanent. Your mother’s brain rewired itself to love you-you, specifically. She became addicted. That’s what bonding is, Paxton. Evolution’s chemical cocktail to make mothers obsessively care for the bundle of next year’s genes.”

“All right, fine,” he said. “So the vintage contains-what? Dopamine? The oxytocin stuff?”

“Not that we’ve found so far. Mostly it’s water and blood and dead cells. But there are also long chains of amino acids we’ve never seen before, and some of those are probably psychotropic. Judging from the way charlie males act, I’d bet money on it.” She shook her head. “We do know that the vintage does something to them. The serum triggers production of testosterone and adrenaline and all kinds of byproducts, including carrier compounds similar to MHC. It’s those carriers the charlie women pick up on-and what triggers the bonding cascade. It’s not a general aphrodisiac; they bond to that particular male. They feel empathy for him, like they’re one person.”

“Mirror neurons,” Pax said. At her look he said, “Doreen mentioned them.”

“When, during the kidnapping?”

“I didn’t know what she was talking about, though.”

“If you see someone laughing and you smile even though you don’t know what’s funny, those are mirror neurons firing. If someone yawns and you yawn, or you see someone get kicked in the balls and you wince-see, I just talked about it and you made a face.”

“I’m not seeing what this has to do with my father or the other old men. If this stuff is such a love potion, why aren’t the young, uh, charlie boys producing it themselves?”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s too expensive for young males to both create it and do everything else they have to do. Maybe it’s a way for the older men to keep control of the tribe. In the animal kingdom this happens all the time-alpha males and alpha females control reproduction in the group, either through intimidation or chemical means. Elder bull elephants keep the young males in line by suppressing the youngster’s musth.”

“Must?”

“With an ‘h’ at the end. It’s a period where the males go a bit crazy from horniness, rage. When older males are around, however, they don’t go into it.” She seemed to find the look on his face humorous. “Just watch the Discovery Channel for a couple days.”

“I don’t think I can buy the idea of my father as a bull elephant,” he said. “Okay, maybe he’s as big as one, but he’s sure not in charge of the tribe.”

“No, that would be Rhonda,” Dr. Fraelich said.

“Heh.” But the doctor wasn’t joking. And then he realized that he wasn’t joking either. Rhonda ran all the tribes. She’d jerked him around like a puppet.

“The point is,” the doctor said, “nobody knows what’s going on with the vintage. As they say in the journals, further research is required.”

“Rhonda told me once that that’s what they were doing with the vintage. Research. For a cure.”

“Really,” Dr. Fraelich said.

“Yeah. Only during the robbery, Rhonda said that only the stupid people believed that.”

After a moment he looked up. “You could say, ‘Oh no you’re not stupid, Paxton.’”

“I could.”

“Come on, what’s so unbelievable about looking for a cure?”

“Nothing. Plenty of people are. But they’re not using the vintage to do it.”

“Why the hell not?”

She inhaled from the cigarette, blew smoke through her nose. “That’s part of the deal, Paxton. We’re keeping the vintage out of the literature, out of the media. Vintage chemicals show up in charlie bloodwork-no way to hide that-but no one but me is studying the vintage itself. And no one outside of Switchcreek even knows that men secrete the stuff, or that it’s extracted.”

“Why would you keep that secret?”

“Think about it, Paxton. Let’s say it’s a new narcotic. A wonder drug. How long do you think it would be before there was a bounty on every male charlie? If the government didn’t grab the men, then it would be some pharmaceutical company. Or God help us, drug dealers.”

“That’s a little paranoid, isn’t it?” he said.

“Tell me how I’m wrong.”

After perhaps half a minute he said, “This deal. This is something between you and Rhonda?”

“By necessity,” she said.

“Okay, you have the monopoly-you’re the only one studying this stuff. So do you know what it does to non- charlies? Skips, argos, outsiders…”

“You?”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Except for you, the vintage does hardly anything to non-charlies. A mild rush.” She tapped ashes into the can. “But you took an extreme dose. When you swam in it you became sensitized.”

“No, it happened earlier. The baptism may have sped me along, but even before that night the tiniest touch of the stuff got me high.” He’d been primed for it, like a twelve-year-old with alcoholic genes waiting for his first sip of Southern Comfort.

It’s not Harlan that’s different. It’s Paxton.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “I can look at your blood-work again, but I doubt I’d see anything. Trust me, the non-changed just don’t react like you do.”

“So how’s she doing it, then?” Pax asked.

Dr. Fraelich cocked an eyebrow.

“Aunt Rhonda,” he said. “If she’s not making money from pharmaceutical companies, and if she’s not selling the vintage to outsiders, and there aren’t enough charlies to make a living off of, then where’s she getting her money?”

Dr. Fraelich looked out over the bushes at the highway. Pax stepped closer. “Listen,” he said. “I think Jo found out something about her. Figured out what she’s up to. Something bad enough to make Rhonda stop her.”

The doctor shook her head. “Watch yourself, Paxton.”

“You’re afraid of her,” he said, surprised.

“You may have grown up here, Paxton, but you don’t understand a thing.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“Forget about Rhonda. Jo made enemies more dangerous than her. There are fanatics in her own clade who’d- Jesus, what now?”

She was looking over his shoulder. He turned as a white sedan and a white SUV pulled into the parking lot. The vehicles stopped, blocking in a row of cars. A young man about Paxton’s age popped out of the sedan.

“Oh, of course,” Dr. Fraelich said. She dropped the cigarette and tamped it out with her shoe.

The man quickly strode toward them, smiling. He wore an untucked linen shirt, khaki pants, and strappy, open- toed leather shoes that were a cross between sandals and slippers. “Marla,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

He gripped the doctor in a vigorous two-handed shake, then spun to face Paxton and offered his hand. “Eric Preisswerk, from the CDC down in Atlanta.” His accent was standard TV American with a European vowel or two thrown in. Up close he didn’t look quite so young; Pax put him at thirty-five, thirty-six. He was short and athletically trim, humming with positive energy. The kind of guy who’d kick your ass in racquetball and then insist you’d almost beaten him.

“Paxton Martin,” Pax said, but the man’s attention was already back on Dr. Fraelich.