Race Across the Sky (23 page)

“Come here.”

June moved beside him, keeping her hands above Lily's chest. Mack touched the back of her neck, and she felt a shocking heat burn through her skin. Then he lay on his back, keeping his hand on the back of her neck, pushing her head downwards.

“Wait,” she whispered, “what?”

“I told you, my energy is low.”

“Sure, but I don't understand?”

“See June, what we're doing here, what you're asking? It
depletes
me. She's taking all my energy. I need you to give me more. It's something,” Mack told her, “all the women here help with.”

She recalled seeing Leigh, Rae, even Aviva, leaving or entering Mack's room at all hours of the day. No, she thought, this couldn't be why.

Mack pulled down his running shorts. His matted hair continued down his belly and below. June looked at the prone body of her infant daughter sleeping peacefully beside him.

Mack paused, staring straight into her. “You can start slowly.”

June looked away. “Let me just move Lily.”

June slid her hands underneath her daughter's warm, beautiful body, lifted her off the mattress, and carried her to a yoga mat by the window. As she laid her down, she stroked her sleeping, open hand, those small and perfect fingers.

She felt the exquisite smoothness of her skin slip away as she stood and went to him.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

S
hane picked up the phone to call Caleb at his copy store.

A nervousness that he had not felt in years swept through him as the phone rang. He felt as if he were calling his high school crush. A young man's voice answered. “O'Neil's Copies.”

“Hi, is, um, Caleb Oberest there?”

A pause. “Caleb doesn't work here anymore.”

“He doesn't?”

“Not in, I don't know, like three months.”

Shane's stomach clenched. “Do you know how I can reach him?”

“Don't, sorry.”

“Wait, does he come in for messages?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I'd like to leave one. His brother. Tell him to call his brother.”

“Okay. Have a nice day.”

Fucking college kids, Shane exhaled. He stared at the pads of his cubicle wall. Meant for thumbtacks, he supposed, but similarly good for bashing a copy store clerk's head into.

This explained why Caleb hadn't responded to his letter about a present for Lily. Vague as it had been, Shane had expected some reply. There was no phone at the Happy Trails house. Where did June work, he wondered? Had she told him? If so, he could not recall. He stood, waved good night to Stacey, and walked slowly to his car.

This week, Dennis had sat him down to discuss adding a Phase Two Alzheimer's drug to his workload. Two hospital oncology departments in Oregon that had not had time for him suddenly asked him to make presentations on Sorion. Nicholas was starting to teethe, waking at night in fits of fury. He was overloading.

On Pinon Drive he saw Prajuk's white Volvo signaling out of a Taco Bell. He seemed to be manipulating a burrito in his car as he drove. Shane laughed; he liked this man very much.

The night had deepened; stars swept in from the ocean. Riding the elevator up with Prajuk, Shane felt a low rush of nicotine as if he were smoking by osmosis.

“We'll see how Thailand is doing. This thing,” Prajuk explained, “should be generating some response by now.”

“And if it isn't?”

“Then the dosage may be wrong. I will administer more, and we will wait another week.”

“How many times would you do that before you figure it's not working at all?”

“Three, maybe four.”

“And after that?”

They stepped out on the third floor and walked past the other closed doors, some with muffled voices coming from inside. What were they stressing, Shane wondered? How close were they to their dreams, or to failure?

“After that, we have to ask questions. How many months do we have to test a range of compositions and dosages? How many more mice will this thing need? How much more money can you obtain to build them? How much time is there before the baby's lungs atrophy?”

“I'm not a fan of those questions.”

“Don't worry, please. Definitely we are not ready to ask them yet.”

Prajuk walked to the deep stainless steel sink to wash his hands. Shane moved to the cage and looked at Thailand. Prajuk did not seem, he thought, to have developed any emotional attachment to this creature. He must have unleashed impossible cruelties upon generations of mice by now, given them tumors, asthma, open sores, blindness, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, worse. But Shane could not help smiling at the tiny thing as Prajuk lifted him by the tail and brought him over to the Buxco box.

Once inside, Thailand adjusted to his claustrophobic glass. Only this time, Shane was watching a totally different animal. Instead of curling up, the mouse was up on its back two legs, attempting to climb out.

“Jesus, look at the guy.”

Prajuk squinted at the levels meter. “He is processing significantly more air. Looks like eighty-five percent. Versus thirty percent when he arrived here.”

“Oh, man. Oh shit. It works?”

“Watch his movements.”

“I am. That's normal?”

“This thing is how a healthy mouse behaves.”

They weighed and measured him. Thailand had been carefully constructed to have the same disease as Lily, the same train whistle wheeze, the same swollen feet, the same inability to exhale. Only now, he did not have any of those things.

“We need to send his blood out to measure liver and kidney function,” Prajuk explained.

“How long will it take to get results?”

“Two or three days. While we wait, Healy and I will humanize the drug.”

Shane felt his lungs pushing against his chest, as if the alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency had somehow been passed into him. Remembering Janelle's worry, he asked, “Lily weighs a lot more than a mouse. And she's growing. How do you know the right dosage?”

“This thing is not like Tylenol. It is not a question of dosage, it is a question of efficacy. The drug carries the protein into her genes, instructs it to switch on. Will her body respond? With this type of treatment, we give a dose periodically to keep the process in forward motion.”

“Forward motion,” Shane muttered. “I'm familiar with that concept.”

“Trust me, this thing will be the correct dosage for the baby.”

“You're giving this to a baby?”

Shane turned around. When had Healy come in? He stood there with his head cocked, his short, cut arms plunging into his pockets, staring at them.

“Of course not,” Prajuk insisted, stumbling noticeably.

Right now, Shane knew, Healy was trying to re-create the conversation he had just heard. Everything would depend on his and Prajuk's reactions. If they communicated no emotion, then Healy might let himself dismiss these words. Anything else, and he would come for their jugulars; it seemed to be in his DNA.

“You said the exact dosage for the
baby
.”

“A baby mouse,” Shane began. “In case we need to try again.”

“Listen,” Prajuk tried, “Thailand is breathing at eighty-five percent normal. He has no wheezing.”

But Healy's face did not change. “Who else at Helixia is working on this?”

“Just focus on what we're paying you to do.”

“I'm taking a piss,” Shane laughed, hoping to end the conversation.

He walked toward the door. Healy took a step forward at the same time and gave Shane a small but significant shoulder shove backward.

Shane yelled, “Hey, man, what's that?”

Healy walked to the Buxco on the back shelf and peered down at its instruments. He said quietly, “I want to speak to someone else who works on this.”

Shane went to the bathroom down the hallway. Opening the door, he felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned around.

“Did Healy push you just then?” Prajuk asked, his fingers fidgeting.

“Yeah, he did. The little fucker.”

“Tonight will be his final day with us,” Prajuk said in a low voice.

“What if he tells the professor who recommended him what he heard?”

“Tom Sangee? He tells my good friend Tom that he overheard us say something about a baby? Tom won't even call me. And definitely I liked your answer.”

Shane glanced back down the dim hallway. “He didn't buy it.”

“I will tell him he is no longer required here.”

“Isn't he, though? Required here?”

“I can accomplish the rest with you. You've learned enough. He is a good postdoc, but he is an asshole.”

“Little bit of a Napoleon complex, you think?”

“Oh, definitely. But these issues exist in many bioresearchers, you know.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they are in touch with the mechanisms of our existence. Because they are playing with the raw materials of God.”

“It must make you feel very powerful.”

Prajuk looked at Shane. “No. That's the reason, you see.” He smiled.

“Nothing makes you feel less powerful than manipulating life.”

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

“H
appy Trails!” Mack called out loudly, and everyone laughed.

Outside the house it was pitch dark, four in the morning, and the stars shown madly, laughing like fairies in the woods. Each of them gathered in a wide circle outside for a standing hug, wrapping their arms around each other, heads down.

“‘For we cannot tarry here! We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger. We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers! O pioneers!'”

Everyone clapped and hollered, and they climbed into the vans. Mack had rented three of them for the drive. They were decades old, their transmission and brakes shot long ago. The vinyl seats leaked foam, the floors covered with cigarette burns from another era. One of them carried the faint stink of vomit.

June carried Lily and her plastic car seat. The purple hiking backpack was stuffed full of clothes and diapers. She handed it to Kyle as they settled in the last row of a maroon van. She patted Lily's hand, and the whole van sang songs as the Happy Trails Running Club began their three-van caravan through the mountains, down to the desert, and into the forest, to Yosemite.

She had seen this same road a year before, only she had been coming the other way, from Taos. Since then, Lily had grown from infancy into a tiny person; her body no longer bore any similarity to her former self. And neither, June thought, did her own. The group diet and the running had transformed her into some abstract version of herself, lithe and pure. She wondered if Todd would recognize either of them if they walked into the Gorge.

As morning heightened they slipped into the red earth of Utah, its numinous red arches rising in the distance. She wondered who had planned this dull highway that shunned and avoided them. If instead they had plotted paths that wound close to the scenic beauty of this country, maybe more people might emerge from their cars and walk among the natural healing energy of the world. Instead, they suffered a system of flat straight roads that encouraged stasis. It felt as if the highways had been designed by the army, when they should have been designed by artists.

The baby seemed to enjoy the scenery blurring past her window. She held a book of animal pictures, turned its pages with what to June seemed great thoughtfulness, and slept. As the sky turned violet, they parked on the side of the highway and took a long run in the desert dusk. Leigh had come down with a cold and offered to stay in the van with Lily. Mack had purchased a cheap cell phone to stay in constant contact with Barry Strong and all of the arrangements in Yosemite. He was on the phone when June took off with everyone else into the open land. The dirt and clay felt warm against her feet. She felt as if she could run forever.

When Caleb ran unexpectedly beside her, June politely acknowledged him with a nod, knowing he would not speak. But to her great surprise, he did. He spoke, looking out at the beautiful sky, until some of the others slowed down and got too close. And then Caleb dashed ahead.

She stared after him and did not speak to him again.

Back at the vans, Leigh was giving Lily a bottle.

“I loved the company,” she'd laughed when she handed Lily back into June's slick arms.

“Fresh diaper,” June noticed approvingly.

“Damn right,” Leigh high-fived her.

They ate root stew, which John had packed in containers and heated on hot plates on the shoulder of this road, watching stars part the evening. They joined hands and meditated together, building on their new kinetic energy. Then they climbed back in for the night's drive through the desert.

Three days later, the three old vans finally groaned to a halt outside the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park. They were staying four to a room at an old damp lodge just inside the park. Many of the other entrants were also staying here, and handwritten signs for pre-race meetings had been taped all over the lobby.

June stood with a fussy Lily in the lobby, trying to calm herself down as well. She was about to run one hundred miles into its old trails, with no safety net, save an occasional aid station, ending with a mammoth climb up Half Dome. She was confronted with the reality of her commitment. It was much more than she had ever done. She bent her head and prayed that she was ready.

The sky was the color of late lilacs; black tops of soaring oaks brushed its belly. June noticed Caleb standing outside, staring in the same direction. A force seemed to be pulling them from somewhere deep inside its trees. She was hoping to finish, but he was expecting to win.

It would be Caleb's energy against Yosemite's, she understood. Either the two would merge on the old trails and explode together to glory, or they would battle each other until one of them claimed victory.

Tomorrow, she knew, he would run into this wilderness until he arrived at its end, or his own.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

“We have a problem.”

Shane stopped on the street. His hand tightened around his phone. He had been undertaking a long-needed Saturday walk with his son. A bonding stroll. He had been regaling him with the world, placing his ten-month-old hands onto the bark of trees, pointing to seagulls and sails by the bay.

“What happened?”

“We need to talk in person. I can be at the Peet's near you in fifteen minutes.”

Shane hung up and pushed the stroller quickly back home.

“Be back in a bit,” he kissed Janelle.

“What's a bit?” she called after him, frustrated.

Running through the damp air, Shane felt as if his heart had been injected with thick sap. Something was wrong with Thailand. The mouse had undergone some failure of its renal glands. His chance to save Lily, and to bring Caleb home, was gone.

Inside the coffee shop the music was horrifyingly up-tempo; its optimism grated on Shane's nerves. He wished he had suggested a bar. He sat in a hard chair. Beside him a woman produced a shrill vibrato laugh after every sentence she finished. Finally, after half an hour, a bell over the door twinkled, and Prajuk hesitated in the threshold. Worry seemed to contaminate his face. Shane watched him inhale one last mad pull from the Parliament an inch from his face. He lifted a hand, and Prajuk came over, reeking of smoke.

“What killed him?”

Prajuk narrowed his eyes, confused. Then he nodded slowly. “This thing, it works. I told you that it would.”

Shane dropped his head. The flutter of a billion stars. When he looked back up, Prajuk was still staring at him. “The mouse is fine, Shane. We, on the other hand, are not.”

“What happened?”

“Our Mister Healy.”

“Healy?”

“He called Anthony Leone.”

“He did what?” he shouted.

The two women at the next table turned to them. Shane took a hard breath through his nose.

“He left a voice mail for Anthony. Which Anthony forwarded to me. In this thing he says that he has been working for Prajuk Acharn and Shane Oberest in a lab away from the office. On a biologic which we told him is a Helixia project. He has asked to speak with the head of this project.”

Shane let his head fall against his forearms. “Fuck. Fuck.”

“And then he told him that he is concerned because we are planning to give this drug to a baby.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I just received this thing, this voice mail, on my e-mail. Clearly Anthony expects an answer however.” Prajuk glanced around, as if the café were full of biotechnology spies, which, for all Shane knew, it probably was.

“I told you,” Shane said softly, “if anyone at Helixia found out anything, you're out. You were never part of it. There are no records. I'm taking full ownership of it all. I'm sorry it came to this.” He pushed his hands through his black hair as he thought out loud. “I can probably tell Anthony that I used your name to get Healy to work for me, but that you never had any part in it, and Healy's exaggerating or lying or something. I'll think about it.”

The scientist stared at him.

“Look,” Shane reminded him, “we talked to Brad Whitmore. We're not breaking a law.”

“Laws and reputations are separate things.”

Shane's amber eyes lit up. “Or, tell Anthony that you turned Healy down for an internship. He's making this all up.”

“How would he know your name?”

Shane's head began to hurt. Outside a soft rain had arrived. The drizzle it left on the windows was, he saw, almost unbearably beautiful.

Shane reached across the table and patted his arm. “Stop smoking.”

“I like smoking.”

“Everyone likes smoking. But everyone quits.”

“You never even started, not even once?”

“I never did.”

“Because you are a runner.”

Shane saw Fred and Caleb, far ahead of him on a winding morning road, in synch in the dampness of the ocean air. No, he thought. That was something he was not.