Chameleon (10 page)

“Enough, Will, I’m not stupid,” Mickie snapped.

I laughed inside, keeping my face directed to the kiosk.

The
crêpe
maker flipped the large pancake over and then in half, dumping a truckload of cheese on top. Will grinned, shooting me a thumbs–up.

After a few minutes we sauntered away with a nutella
crêpe
for me and a
spécialité de maison
for Mickie, which involved strawberries
en flambé.
Mick also grabbed an espresso which came in a dixie–sized plastic cup.

“Looks like mud,” said Will.

Mickie smiled and drank it down in two gulps. “Tastes better.”

We finished our late lunch; my cell phone informed me that in California, my parents still slept.

“This is too weird,” Mickie said, waving her hand at the Eiffel Tower. “Before Sir Walter, I never
imagined
myself coming here, sitting in the shadow of
that.
Not given our … realities.”

“
La Belle France
is getting to you,” Will said, guffawing.

His sister merely smiled, too enchanted to bicker. Her realities had been harsh for a long time. Their situation hadn’t allowed her even the luxury of pulling inside herself when her mom died. She’d had a kid brother who suddenly depended on her for everything when she’d been maybe two years older than I was right now.

It made my life look easy. It made something bloom inside my heart for her: a soft, warm flower. I shook my head. Mickie wasn’t a person you could go around handing soft, warm heart–flowers to.

“Here comes the fourteenth century,” Will said.

Mickie back–handed his shoulder. “Will! Keep it down, already.”

Definitely not a warm heart–flower kind of girl.

“
Bonjour Mesdemoiselles, Monsieur
,” said Sir Walter.

“Was your meeting … profitable?” asked Will.

The French gentleman nodded, running his fingers down his pointed goatee. “I have given certain … friends … a great deal to think over, certainly. I believe things will heat up nicely once the authenticity of the book has been established.” He lifted his eyes, studying the
Tour Eiffel
. “And yourselves? You have been to the top already?”

“Actually we just finished lunch,” Mickie said. “Some of us can’t think without food in our bellies.”

“Shut up,” muttered Will.

“You want to go up with us?” I asked politely.

“Er, if you will pardon me,” said Sir Walter, shaking his head.

“Guess you’ve had a few chances,” Will said.

“No, no, it is not that.” Sir Walter looked bashfully at his shoes and then back at us. “I have a most shameful fear of heights.”

“That’s a common fear,” I said.

“For a chameleon, it is a ridiculous one,” he replied.

“Why?” asked Mickie, looking from Sir Walter to me and Will.

Will and I shrugged.

“Ah,” Sir Walter said. “You have perhaps not experimented as chameleons with … gravity?”

Mickie’s eyebrows raised. “No, you don’t want my brother messing with gravity.”

Sir Walter chuckled. “I misspoke. Your brother cannot influence the force of gravity. But a chameleon can operate outside of its influence upon him– or herself.”

“Because gravity only affects things that have mass,” Mickie said.

Sir Walter nodded but didn’t enlighten us further.

“But in our case,” I said, trying to draw him out, “We have no mass, right?”

Sir Walter’s head inclined once more.

“Okay,” said Will, “We give up. How’s it work?”

“Let us walk,” said Sir Walter. “Unless you would prefer to journey atop
La Tour Eiffel
?”

“Anyone here
have
to go up the tower?” asked Mickie.

We all agreed we could live without going to the top of the Eiffel Tower when the alternate activity was picking Sir Walter’s brain for information. We stood to walk back to our hotel, and a bit of late afternoon sun broke through the clouds.

As we strolled along broad boulevards, Sir Walter solved for us the equation of gravity. According to him, moving through air while in chameleon form mirrored moving through water while solid. Essentially, we could move up and down
through air
as well as up through ceilings and down through floors.

Will shrugged when I asked if he’d known all this. “I never tried leaving the ground. I mean, knew about passing
down
through the floor, but it never seemed useful to me.”

“As with swimming,” said Sir Walter, “you
decide
where it is you wish to go. Although you may upon occasion observe an unusual effect. If the day is very blustery, you may find yourself buffeted along
because you expect the wind to move you
. It is actually within your choice to move with the wind or not, but sometimes the mind is influenced into guiding you by the expectations created by what you can see.”

We nodded like this made perfect sense, which I’m not sure it did, but I just figured I’d stay away from tornadoes.

“When we have a measure of privacy, I really must attend to your education as
ree–pillers
,” said our friend, shaking his head sadly.

A sudden gust of wind, icy, blew past and passersby bent their heads low, pulled scarves more tightly.

“Would you prefer a more sheltered journey back to the hotel?” said Sir Walter, indicating a
Métro
entrance.

“What, and miss seeing
la Belle France
?” asked Mickie.

Sir Walter chuckled. Will snorted a laugh and flipped his jacket collar up, buttoning it close around his neck.

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling gloves on. “It’s no worse than back home.”

“No offense to
la Belle France
,” said Will, “I mean, I’m sure you could tell us lots of stuff about all these buildings, but I’ve been wondering about the black book. Did the Nazis make Helmann do that stuff to those kids?”

Sir Walter frowned and turned his eyes to the ground. Another gust tossed leaves and bits of paper across our path.

“Alas,” said Sir Walter. “No one has forced my cousin to do anything for many centuries. The idea was his alone.” Our French friend sighed heavily, leading us onto a sanded path running through a large park.

“His plans have been centuries in the making.” Sir Walter broke off as if deciding the best way to present these plans to us.

Clearing his throat, he began again. “Let us suppose you were to offer a group of dedicated followers the possibility that their offspring could live a thousand years as leaders of a new world. I have lived a long while, and believe me when I say to you there are few offers more compelling than the ones promised to your children. This much, my cousin recognized and decided to exploit.

“Because eventually we all realize we will not live forever, and most of us begin to dream of a legacy, a hope that allows us to leave some part of ourselves behind. A great painting, a body of written work or of research, these are the choices of those who eschew reproducing or who have been disappointed in their hopes for their progeny. But the real siren–call has always been that the flesh–of–my–flesh will live on in glory when I am gone.”

“Immortality for those not planning on getting into Heaven,” said Mickie.

“In a manner of speaking,” agreed Sir Walter. “To convince others that he could offer thousand–year–life spans to their children proved impossible in previous ages. I know that he tried during the Napoleonic era; he gave impassioned speeches to select circles about the creation, from their loins, of a new breed of man. But none believed him; thanks to a whispered word here and there, they saw his abilities as the tricks of a charlatan.” The old gentleman smiled complacently.

“Thanks to you,” I said softly.

He dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“Are you saying back then he was offering to pass out the chameleon gene like candy?” asked Will. “It doesn’t make sense. If he made chameleons, how would he possibly control them?” Will asked.

“Jurassic Park,” I murmured. “You engineer into the cell a need for something that only
you
can provide. Something that would cause a chameleon to die without receiving it on a regular basis.”

“That’s something he could do
now,
but it would have been quite a challenge with earlier technologies,” said Mickie. “Although I guess you could have fed them addictive substances.”

“Neuroprine was his first modern attempt,” Sir Walter explained. “He’s spent untold millions upon the problem since then. His bid for power with Napoleon and again with the National Socialists in Germany were but trial runs. He has learned from his mistakes as well as from his successes.”

“With all the advances in genetics, and Helmann controlling Geneses, we’re talking about something happening within our lifetime,” Will said, a grim expression upon his face.

“I should think he will act within the
normal
span of your lives, even,” Sir Walter agreed, as though he took it for granted Will and I would choose longer–than–usual lives as chameleons.

“Okay,” said Will. “So back up to what you said about proving he could offer long lives to anyone who’d turn to the dark side. Did he make a bunch of chameleons? Was this what he was up to with the children in Nazi Germany?”

“In part, my inquisitive friend,” said Sir Walter, looking grave. He sighed heavily. “You have perhaps heard of the
Lebensborn
project?”

“Sure,” said Mickie. “Himmler’s program to increase the birth rate within so–called racially desirable bloodlines. Financial incentives, assistance for wed or unwed blond–haired blue–eyed women who’d become pregnant and provide Aryan children for the Fatherland. Wasn’t there something about SS officers having first crack at impregnating volunteers or is that urban myth?”

“It’s debated,” Will replied.

Sir Walter nodded. “Controversial, yes, but it is fact that Girard gained access to many such willing women in order to reproduce children born with his genetic information. And to make doubly sure, the children were conceived under special circumstances—you recall in my letter that I asked you where Will was conceived?”

“Shelokum Hot Springs in Alaska,” said Mickie.

“Dude,” said Will. “Enough said. Seriously.”

I flushed, thinking about my conception at Bella Fria Hot Springs. Mickie had theorized and Sir Walter had confirmed that along with inheriting the genes to ripple, conception in a hot springs with the presence of gold and tobiasite tweaked the chromosomes to produce the strange genes we carried.

Sir Walter continued. “It is still a mystery why some of his offspring exhibited chameleon–behavior, while others did not. All carried the Helmann’s gene, certainly. Pfeffer reported to me that he’d seen documentation of this. Pfeffer said he had a theory of why some rippled and others only experienced numbness. He never told me his idea, and I suppose it perished with him.”

“So these kids were ripplers, some of them, and they didn’t run away?” asked Will.

“It is, alas, a simple matter to deceive a child—to frighten them from attempting to escape. It was even
true
the children would likely have starved had they escaped. It was wartime and food was in scarce supply.”

I shivered. I would have faced starvation, given the choice between hunger and those evil rooms. We crossed a busy boulevard into another park, lush and green even in December.

“Moreover,” continued Sir Walter, “as soon as a child could ripple, Helmann began the medicinal treatment which suppressed the ability.”

“So, what, Pfeffer didn’t take his meds?” Mickie asked.

Sir Walter laughed. “He was even more clever than that. Unlike the other children, Pfeffer never revealed what he could do. I was the first in whom he confided, once he trusted me.”

“Sir Walter,” said Mickie. “Back to the ‘why did some kids ripple’ question—Pfeffer said something once.”

“Yes?”

“He said that Will would not be who he is without the way our dad treated him while he was
still under the age of eight
. When I asked Pfeffer about it, he seemed upset that he’d spoken aloud and tried to make nothing of his statement. I’ve been thinking, though, what if the numbness–producing response
changed
to an invisibility–producing response in individuals traumatized prior to a certain age, say, eight years of age?

“As an adaptation, this could exist to give an individual a greater chance for survival. It’s well–documented that kids’ brains go to a lot of trouble to protect them from the full experience of abuse or torture; kids will report retreating into a mind–space where they ‘leave’ their bodies while their abusers harm them. When I asked Pfeffer, he wouldn’t comment, other than to say it was dangerous to try to learn what I wanted to know.”

“Fascinating,” said Sir Walter. “Yes, I think perhaps … this is most interesting, and disturbing, in light of what we know of my cousin’s activities.”

“It’s true for Sam, too,” Mickie said quietly. “She had trauma prior to age eight.”

She was right. And some days I still felt like I was recovering from the day I saw my friend and my mother killed.

“Of course, some of the children upon whom Helmann experimented never made it to eight years old. But, yes. Perhaps my cousin intended to traumatize the children with the experiments.”

The sun sank behind a thick band of clouds upon the horizon as it hit me what Mickie and Sir Walter were suggesting. All the children upon whom Helmann had experimented, the ones he had traumatized, had abused—they were all his offspring.
His own children.

This was beyond wrong. My stomach roiled at the thought, and I could not pull my mind back from the horrors of the black book. Once more, words and images from the dark tales rose before me. Hunger. Fighting. The desperate cold. The bowl of poison. All while Helmann stood by, invisibly, taking careful notes.

“Sir Walter,” called Will. “Hold up. I think Sam’s going to yack.”

I barely made it off the sanded path, behind a row of manicured bushes. I fell, gloved hands smacking onto the cold, hard earth, gravel imbedding itself right through my jeans and into my knees. Mickie dropped beside me, holding back my hair. I heaved until my stomach emptied, and then my eyes poured out what liquid remained while Mickie passed tissues to me. It was all too much: the
Lebensborn
children; the experiments in the black book; the cruelty and determination of our enemy.