Sins of the Father (20 page)

“Science is a tool,” she was saying. “Like a wrench or a shovel. Or a gun. You choose what you want to do with that tool. What you want to build, and what you want to destroy.

“
You
choose, Walter.”

And then, the floor beneath his sneakers cracked and opened up, and before he could react, he was plunged into the icy water beneath.

For a terrifying moment, the shock of it—the vicious toothy cold so intense it felt like burning—completely overwhelmed his senses.

He flailed, and thrashed in the water, consumed by a blind panic, his eyes clenched tightly shut. But when he opened them, he found that he could see perfectly, as if he were wearing goggles in a clear, clean pool. There were throbbing red shapes dancing around the edges of his vision, and he could see that he wasn’t alone.

A small child was floating, just out of reach, asleep or unconscious. Head tucked down, dark hair drifting around a pale face. Walter stretched his arm out, fingers brushing against the child’s sleeve. The contact seemed to jolt the child back to terrified consciousness, body jerking and face turning, eyes wide and unseeing.

Peter.

Now that he was turned toward Walter, he seemed to age. It was clear that this was Peter today, thirteen years old and dressed in the same black sweatshirt and jeans he’d been wearing when he came to the lab earlier.

Peter…

Was this a hallucination, or a memory? Had this already happened? It seemed so vivid and real at its core, as solid and unquestionably true as any other memory. But it couldn’t be. It was impossible.

He and Peter were
alive
.

Or were they?

Walter tried to say his son’s name, but all that came out of his mouth was a rush of silver bubbles. Peter reached out his hand, eyes desperate and pleading as he began to sink into the inky darkness below.

His lungs ached for air. Close to blacking out from lack of oxygen, Walter flailed with all his remaining strength, paddling toward the receding form. Reaching out, he gripped the boy’s hand. It felt ice cold and rigid—like the hand of a corpse.

He pulled his son into his arms, not sure what he actually planned to do, but not willing to let him go down alone. Above them was an unbroken bluish-white ceiling of ice. They were trapped.

Darkness began to eclipse his vision, the unforgiving cold swiftly shutting his body down and making his thoughts sluggish and murky. Just before he blacked out completely, he looked down at Peter and was shocked to see a totally different child, looking back up at him. A strange, frail child with a smooth, bald head like that of a chemotherapy patient, and big dark eyes that seemed to look right through him.

Then he felt a dozen hands gripping him, all at once, grabbing his arms and twisted fistfuls of his shirt and hauling him rapidly upward until he slammed violently against the ice. Only now it wasn’t a ceiling above him anymore, it was a wall. An opaque smooth wall, like frosted glass. And he himself was no longer underwater.

He was standing upright in the middle of his safe familiar lab.

The strange child that used to be Peter was gone.

He took a moment to collect himself, to breathe deeply and try to stabilize his thoughts. This was just a bad trip. A particularly vivid, frightening trip, but nothing Walter couldn’t handle. The key was to remain calm, rational, and objective. Observe the unusual effects of this new blend and accurately remember them in detail, so that he would be able to use this data when the time came to reformulate.

Yet he still felt scattered and breathless, heart skittish and desperate like a trapped rat in his chest. He remained pressed against the inexplicable glass wall that trapped him in the middle of the lab, unable to move. Nothing seemed certain. Even the simplest, most fundamental things seemed ephemeral.

Who was he, really?

And who was that other me?

As if summoned by his question, the other Walter—the hard one—appeared on the other side of the frosted glass, facing away. Indistinct and blurred at first, just a sinister shadow, then becoming clearer as the glass became clear around him, the way a warm hand melts the frost on a winter window.

Walter touched the glass and found it soft and yielding, like living skin.

By peering over Hard Walter’s shoulder, he could see Carla standing there, still glowing as if lit from within.

“You need to burn it,” Carla was saying, holding up the journal. “It’s the only way.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hard Walter replied. “Why should I do that?”

“No,” Walter whispered. “It’s my… my life’s work…”

“This isn’t your life’s work,” Carla said, her hand on the cover of the journal. “
You
are your life’s work. You choose who you want to be. But you need to make the right choice.

“Burn the journal,” she insisted. She walked over to one of the worktables and placed the journal in a steel basin. Then she reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a heavy silver cigarette lighter.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Hard Walter said.

“Carla… please,” Walter said.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “
You
need to do it.” She held out the lighter and thumbed back the cover.

“You need to do it,” she repeated, and she struck the flint.

A burst of roiling blue flame engulfed her. Instantly her curly blond hair was on fire, her mouth wide open in a silent scream. Then she flailed her burning arms, knocking the steel basin and several glass beakers from the table. The beakers shattered on the floor. The journal slid across it toward the open cubbyhole where Julia had found it, stopping just inches short.

As the glass shattered, the flammable liquid caught fire, too, releasing a toxic cloud of choking smoke and sending burning tendrils flowing toward the diary.

Walter was still trapped behind the soft glass, pounding his fists against it and screaming Carla’s name, but time seemed to have slowed to a crawl in the lab. On the other side of the barrier, the graceful serpentine flames were almost beautiful. Carla looked beautiful, too, as if she were dancing a dreamy, slow motion ballet. He could see the other Walter, standing between the burning angel that Carla had become and the threatened diary. Hard Walter was equidistant between them, and Walter could see that he was torn, deciding who—or what—he should save.

There was a large, ratty blanket stuffed into one of the lower cupboards, put there the last time Walter had slept in the lab. The other Walter could grab it and throw it over Carla to smother the flames and save her life. But if he did, the flaming liquid would reach the journal.

On the other hand, he could save the journal, dive across the floor and push it back into its hiding place, replacing the fireproof tile that had protected it all these years. But by the time he did that, it might be too late to save Carla.

It was no choice at all.

So why was the other Walter hesitating?

“Go!” Walter implored. “Save her.”

He pressed his hands against the soft glass, desperately searching for any breach or weakness where he might be able to break through. It was a solid membrane that would bend, but not break. More than that, it was all around him now, on all sides and above in an unbroken ovoid shell that gave him little more than the space taken up by his outstretched arms.

“Save her!” he cried again, banging on the glass to try to get the other Walter’s attention. “Don’t just stand there, save her!
Carla!
”

But then, to his horror, the Hard Walter dove for the journal.

Walter felt the impact of that decision as if it was a kick to the stomach. He cried out in wordless anguish, turning to see Carla collapse to the floor, her angelic flames lost in the sea of fire that was swiftly engulfing that entire side of the room.

When he shifted to see what the other Walter was doing, he found himself on the other side of the lab, crouching over the cubbyhole in the floor, pressing the fireproof tile back into place.

There was no glass membrane.

No other him.

He
had chosen to save the journal, instead of rescuing Carla.

And with that awful revelation came a deep, rumbling crack down the center of his psyche, splitting him open from inside and sending him spinning into a bottomless abyss of madness.

Peter sat on the sofa, a book open in his lap, but not reading.

He was staring resentfully at his mother, who was “napping” on the other couch in front of some vapid television program. She was always napping these days, an empty glass never far away.

She had been napping when he got home from school and decided to go over to his father’s lab, and was napping again when he returned from the strange, cheerfully manic trip to the ice-cream parlor for root-beer floats. Which Peter didn’t even like all that much, but he was so happy to have his father paying attention to him again that he sucked one down without protest. His father had even looked at his chemistry test, and said that he was proud of Peter. He still had a warm, happy, birthday kind of feeling in his belly when he got home, but that feeling quickly drained away to a dull depression.

She had changed clothes since the last nap, and now had an empty rocks glass instead of an empty wine glass. Other than that, nothing had changed.

Probably never would.

The more isolated Peter became, the more disconnected from his family, the more convinced he became that he didn’t fit in anywhere. And any time he would experience a moment of shared intimacy or a feeling of belonging, it would be quickly eclipsed by moments like this. Moments where he felt alone again, even with someone else in the room.

He’d made a concerted effort to find friends, carefully studying other guys who were popular and adopting their mannerisms and tastes. He found that he was extremely good at mimicry and manipulation, but although he was able to charm people into thinking they liked him, those other kids didn’t really know him. They knew the easygoing, friendly, wisecracking mask Peter presented for their benefit.

But under that mask, he still felt like an outsider. And he secretly resented them for befriending him only after he’d made the effort to pretend he was the kind of person they liked.

Then he started pulling little scams in the lunchroom, tricking other kids out of their coveted snack items. It wasn’t that he actually
wanted
the candy—he could just have bought whatever he wanted from the vending machines. His mom gave him plenty of money.

It was her morning ritual, a bleary, red-eyed routine. She fished the money out of her purse and pressed it into his hand like some kind of payoff. Maybe it made her feel better for checking out on him every night.

No, he perpetrated these minor swindles because he could. And because it was fun. He’d even thought about trying something involving real money, but that was probably a bad idea. Because no matter how disconnected he felt from his family, he couldn’t stand the thought of his father finding out about something like that.

The phone rang, causing him to jump.

Peter’s mother rolled over, but didn’t wake up.

He sighed and got up. It took him a minute to figure out where his mother had left the cordless handset, but he followed the electronic chirping sound and eventually found it under the dining-room table.