Sins of the Father (17 page)

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 1991

Peter Bishop shuffled his boots through the damp autumn leaves scattered across the walkways between the bus stop and the building that housed his father’s lab.

In his hands he held a chemistry test that had been folded and unfolded way too many times since his science teacher, Ms. Chiang, had handed it to him that morning with a broad, encouraging smile. At the top there was—in bright red pen—a circled “A+” with the word “EXCELLENT!” written in small, neat capital letters below.

It was cold and blustery, but he barely felt it, as excited as he was to show the test to his father. He felt sure that scoring an A+ in his father’s favorite subject would finally be enough to pull the old man’s head out of his experiments, and get him to take notice of his newly minted teenage son.

Their relationship had always been complex, and somewhat rocky. When he was little, he’d actually been afraid of his father, and did everything he could to avoid being noticed. To be noticed was to be criticized… and found wanting. He could never seem to do anything right in his father’s eyes. He could never be smart enough, or work hard enough to please the elder Bishop.

Walter had been a cold, hard bastard up until Peter was nine. Then the boy had gotten so sick he nearly died. His memories surrounding that time were kind of mixed up and confusing, probably because of the fevers and the medication he’d been on. But the effect of his illness on his father was unquestionable. Seemingly overnight, his father went from an uncaring hard-ass to being almost
too
nice. As if he were overcompensating in some way, trying to make up for all the years he’d been so cold.

But inevitably, the new caring, attentive dad started getting wrapped up in his work again. He never went back to being as cruel and critical as he had been before Peter got sick—he just got distracted. More and more often, he would spend all night working at the lab, finally staggering in and collapsing on the couch minutes before Peter left for school in the morning. Even when he was in the room with Peter, his eyes were far away, as if lost in some theoretical contemplation. There seemed to be less and less space left over in that big brain for his son.

As a result, Peter had thrown himself with determined fervor into his schoolwork, particularly science and math. He figured if he could just learn enough to understand the experiments his father was working on, they might have a chance of connecting on some level.

Until then, Peter at least hoped his dad would be proud of the “A+” on his chemistry test.

He walked into the lab building, greeting the friendly and familiar security guard, a paunchy older man with bushy eyebrows named Norman something.

“Hey, Peter,” Norman said as Peter passed. “How’s the junior mad scientist today?”

“Great,” Peter said, grinning and holding up the test. “Got an A-plus!”

“Good job, Junior,” Norman said. He nodded to one side. “Go on in.”

Peter followed the long hallway to his father’s lab. When he pushed the door open, the first thing he saw was his father’s pretty assistant, Carla, on whom he’d always had a ferocious secret crush. She was lying on a low table right in the middle of the room. There were all sorts of wires stuck to her head, avoiding her blond hair, and a weird rubber blindfold sort of thing covering her blue eyes. She was turned in his direction, and as he walked toward the table, he couldn’t help but noticing that he could sort of see down the front of her lab coat.

In fact, he was pretty sure that the tiny sliver of pale purple lace he could see on the left side was part of her bra. Which made him feel hot and a little dizzy.

His father was wearing a lab coat too, and was hunched over some kind of console that looked as if it had been Frankensteined together from a hundred other dead machines.

“How about now, Carla?” he was asking.

“Nothing,” she replied.

“
Dammit
,” his father said. “I was sure I’d adequately compensated for the second reconfiguration.”

“Hey, Dad,” Peter said. “What are you working on?”

“Huh?” His father looked up, startled. “Oh, hello Peter.” He picked up a hemostat and started using it to strip the rubber coating off a stray wire without responding to his son’s question.

“Is that you, Peter?” Carla asked, tilting her blindfolded head toward his voice.

“Hi, Carla,” he replied shyly, feeling himself blushing.

He was unable to resist looking down the front of her lab coat again. Once he did, though, he realized that, since her eyes were covered, she couldn’t tell where he was looking. Which made him feel weird—but not so weird that he didn’t keep looking, anyway. She shifted slightly then, and that little purple sliver of fabric that may or may not have been her bra disappeared from sight.

“How about now?” his father asked her.

“I’m sorry, Walter,” she replied, shaking her wire-crowned head.

“What’s wrong with it?” Peter asked, peering over his father’s shoulder at the console.

His father turned back to him as if he was just as surprised to see him there as he had been when Peter had first greeted him. He frowned slightly, though, pushing his fingers through his wild hair.

“Listen, Peter,” his father said. “I’m sorry, but we’re right in the middle of something here. Don’t you have some studying or homework or something? Just give me a minute…”

His father trailed off, focusing in again on the dysfunctional equipment, and totally dismissing him as if he didn’t even exist. Peter knew all too well that it wouldn’t be a minute.

It was never just a minute.

“Walter!” Carla cried, and he thought she might stick up for him. “I’m starting to get the faintest hint of color,” she continued, “a deep fluctuating indigo. Whatever you’re doing, it’s working!”

For a moment, Peter had hoped maybe she would tell his father not to blow him off like that, but no such luck. It seemed like nobody cared about him, one way or the other. And it wasn’t like there was any point going back home, where his mom would already be well on her way to her daily drunk, lost in her own silent melancholy.

No, Peter had been alienated from everyone around him, ever since his miraculous recovery, and it seemed to get worse all the time. Now that he was thirteen, the gulf between him and the rest of the world was growing and deepening, and leaving him more and more disconnected. Every time he tried to reach out, he was harshly reminded that there just wasn’t any point.

Ah, what the hell…

As he walked dejectedly over to an unused table in the far corner of the lab, he looked down at the folded test in his hand and realized he’d never even had a chance to show the A+ to his father. He felt the sting of angry tears gathering in his eyes, but he didn’t want to cry like a baby—not in front of Carla, even if she was blindfolded.

“Hey,” a female voice said. “What do you have there?”

When he turned, he saw one of his father’s students. A girl, about five years older than him. He’d met her before, there in the lab, and thought maybe her name was Julie or something like that. She was tall and skinny as a rail with absolutely nothing going on under her lab coat in the way of a chest. Her hair was mousy brown and she wore large round plastic glasses. It was kind of hard to notice her with the beautiful Carla in the room, but she’d always been nice enough.

“Chemistry test,” he told her. “I got an A-plus.”

“Awesome,” she replied. “I love chemistry.”

“Me, too,” Peter said. “Especially organic chemistry.”

“I started out studying organic chemistry,” she told him. “But my real passion is virology.”

“Really?” Peter said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Her eyes sparkled behind her glasses.

“You want to help me with a little experiment?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied, and then he frowned. “You’re not gonna make me sick or anything, are you?”

“Of course not,” she said with an impish grin. “I’m not allowed to handle
live
viruses—not in this lab. I’m just working as a lab assistant to offset my tuition. I’m hoping to score an internship in the virology lab next semester.”

“Okay, then,” Peter said. “What do you need me to do?”

She led him over to a table where she had some equipment set up, and a stack of photocopied papers that were crammed with what looked like his father’s handwriting. When he stepped up to her work area, she slid the papers underneath a textbook, almost like she didn’t want him to read them.

He frowned, but decided it was nothing.

“Open your mouth,” she said, taking a long swab out of a sterile packet.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked, flinching away from the swab.

“I’m just going to practice sequencing DNA,” she said. “I did your dad already, and it would be fun to compare two people who are related. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”

“Okay,” he said doubtfully.

“Open,” she said.

He did as she requested, and she stuck the swab into the side of his cheek, rubbing it up and down. It felt a little weird, and he almost gagged, but it didn’t hurt—just like she promised.

“Your father can be a dick sometimes,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. She glanced in his dad’s direction. “But he doesn’t mean it. He really loves you. Well, he tries to, anyway.”

“Well,” his father said, appearing suddenly behind him and clapping his hands. “That wasn’t entirely successful, but I feel as if we’ve compiled some useful new data. Who’s up for root-beer floats?”

Peter turned back to face his father, who seemed like a totally different person. He was beaming and happy, with a big childlike grin. Peter had to stop himself from looking over his own shoulder, to see if there was someone else behind him that his father was inviting to go get ice cream.

No
, he realized,
he means me!

“Um, okay,” he said.

“How about you, Julia?”

“I’m going to work late again tonight, Doctor Bishop,” she replied. “If you don’t mind.”

“Fine, fine,” his father said, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

It felt as if it had taken forever to get rid of the Bishops, but once she was alone in the lab, Julia immediately began to scrutinize her results.

She had been
right
.

There it was, just like Walter’s diary said it would be.

That thin, nearly undetectable protein coating, clinging to the extracted strands of the boy’s DNA. The same coating that had been present on his father’s DNA.

But this anomaly wasn’t hereditary. Walter’s diary had revealed as much—that he wasn’t Peter’s real father. It had seemed like the ravings of a madman when she first read it, but curiosity had compelled her to investigate. And now, extremely subtle variations in his DNA left no room for doubt, though if Julia hadn’t known to look for differences, she might not have spotted them.

No, this abnormal coating was a defensive reaction to an unknown radiation, the unfathomable effects of passing between universes. On its own, it didn’t have any measurable impact whatsoever on the organism in question, any more than the calluses had on a guitar player’s fingers.

Nevertheless, Julia felt as if she had hit the jackpot.

Walter’s secret diaries had been extremely confusing, and frequently difficult to decipher. Some pages seemed to have been penned by a completely different person, right down to some subtle changes in the wild, scrawling handwriting. He would often switch topics in mid-sentence, and had a rambling, often poetic, but ultimately baffling writing style. Yet Julia had studied the diary in minute detail for more than three months, carefully copying all the relevant passages and returning the document to its cubbyhole under the lab floor, where she’d originally found it.

Walter had only hinted—in an erratic, elliptical way—at the idea that had possessed Julia since the day she had discovered this unique protein coating. The idea itself was like being in love. It consumed every moment of her waking, and haunted her dreams. And it was tied directly into her two deepest passions.

Virology, and epilepsy.