The Only Ones (5 page)

Then he gave Rauden a kind of kit and we’re off, with Rauden just driving, not talking.

It’s getting dark. The snow is turning blue.

Rauden didn’t say a word, just drove, and we really been on the road quite a while before he said, real casual, “What did you get for it?”

So I thought, do not say anything.

He pulled over by a house we had seen on the way to the RV and he put his head in his hands. “This is not going to work,” he said and turned the truck around. He drove to a place where there was a kind of shelter with a roof on poles over a bench and two lanterns on the sides. “The bus to Yonkers should come by in a few hours. You should be able to find your way to Queens from there,” and he handed me a bunch of coupons. Before I climbed out he said, “Whatever they paid you for it, it wasn’t enough.” Then he drove away.

I sat on the bench.

It was pretty cold.

So I am going back to the Mound. So, whatever. No vehicle passes.

It got darker. Colder too. Snow under my boots. Snow, snow, snow.

Whatever.

After a while some lights came down the hill in the dark. I stood up so they could see me, if it’s the bus.

Man! It’s the truck. Rauden jumped out, starts running right at me over the snow and now this rube is yelling, “And it’s not worth a goddamn thing without you attached! What moron thought it was?”

I got up and ran.

He fell down in the snow.

I waited.

He pulled himself up by the pole that holds the roof up over the bench. The lantern lit him so you could see where he is covered in snow from falling.

I just wait in the dark, what he will do next.

He walked back to the truck. I heard him hit it with his fist. “And the mess they made taking it out!” he yelled from there. Then he came back and sat on the bench. I stay standing, in case he’s going to run at me again. He just put his head in his hands.

When I am pretty sure he is not going to run again, I told him, “They gave me too much shots.”

He lifts his head up and put the hands down. In the lantern light I could see his eyes trying to follow this. Then they change. “You were megadosed on hormones to maximize an egg Harvest.”

“It broke.”

“Your ovary,” he goes.

“Then they went in to fix it and, well, the surgeon should do it but he died, so the Tech had to but really messed things up.”

He sat a long time on the bench then said, “Who did this to you?”

“New Life labs.”

“New Life?
” He’s like somebody poked him with a stick. “You worked with New Life? In that SOTA Dome in Pennsylvania? But—they have incredibly high standards. They’re major players in the Life Industry. That’s gotta count as some kind of Proof.” He pulled himself up. “Come on, I.”

He went somewhere in the dark. He came back and put, I think it is wood, in front of the truck, tells me to push while he starts the motor. Then I climbed in beside him and off we went, driving, driving all night till we come to a house which had a lot of levels and is shiny, with green covers on everything, and they put me in the basement. I stay there for two days till it is time to beef me up from Bernie’s kit.

I had been beefed up before. In Pennsylvania, like I told Rauden, but also on some different boat. Not
Flora May.
They give you shots and pills and you puff up. It is not invasive.

The house he took me to is Janet Delize’s house, and in the basement they have a cot. They have a window you could see out of if you stood on a chair. Which I did. Well what is this? It is a cow. I had seen pictures of a cow. This cow just goes walking by, with a bell.

And here is what I mean, you never know what will happen. I had done this before. Shots, pills, puff up, all of it.

I never saw a cow though.

v

They did it in the RV in the woods somewhere, in the rain. I woke up very zonked on the orange sofa, with Rauden wheeling by in some kind of chair and saying in a voice I never heard, “Now you’re the genius, bro. But tell me this. How’s somebody going to spring for just two eggs of unknown origin, no antibodies, no Proofs except some very funky software drama, and there is a very reasonable chance her eggs are subpar?”

That’s how I got the news the Harvest didn’t work.

I hear that same voice a lot, the next hour or so, and Rauden’s voice too, both of them saying things like, we could try the Esperanza network. Bro, they are looking for white. Dude, she’s a goddamn Sylvain hardy. But no one knows what that is! I’m trying conventional IVF with her ova and some of Sylvain’s frozen hardy sperm. And, more than once, I hear Rauden’s regular voice, like this, “Forget it, Henry. I’m not running that test.”

When I woke up next, the one in the wheelchair is serving a hot meal that is red and yellow. “Give some to her, Henry,” the regular Rauden said.

“Ok, bro.”

So this other Rauden is Henry. He is Rauden’s bro. He was the other one in the picture in the Box Room, holding baby pigs. He brought me the red and yellow meal, which is not that great.

It’s still raining.

Rauden put the News on. “Dear God.”

It’s the new thing Bernie talked about, starting up in Mumbai, India. It is confirmed in Karachi and possible in Bandar.

Henry did not wear overalls like his bro, but a check shirt and has to wipe the yellow and red stuff off it after he ate. He also got it in his beard. “What about Parvi’s friend from Toronto? You’ve had some dealings with her, right?”

Rauden had took off his boots and wore, like, sandals over socks. “Rini Jaffur, right. What a piece of work. Tragic situation. She had something else in mind. Still, I guess it’s worth a shot.

“Out of reach,” he said, when he came back from the Box Room. “She’s in fucking quarantine. In Sydney, Australia.”

“It got that far?”

“Just prophylactic, I’d say. Panic.” He went to Lab 3 to check the thing he’s mixing with the hardy sperm from Sylvain’s freezers. If it works, that will be easier to pitch than a solo egg.

By the time he comes back, the TV News is saying it’s official, it is a Pandemic. Mumbai Pandy. They name it from where it starts. There are new cases in Pune and Sholapur.

The two of them just sit and stare at the TV.

Henry said, “Reminds me of the first Big One—remember? Watching the News with Dad, talking about the numbers.”

Rauden goes, “Dad said, the Plague had better numbers than this motherfucker.”

“He was crying while he watched.”

On TV, they are saying it got to Trincomalee. Rangoon. It already is in Karachi.

“That’s what it was like hearing the names of all those places in Queens,” says Henry. “Jamaica. Hollis. St. Albans. JFK. Flushing Airport. Powell’s Cove.”

Then they both turned to look at me. Oh, man. Now these guys are crying. Both of them. A long time they looked at me, with tears, until I look away out the window, where it’s still night and still raining.

Then Rauden says to Henry, “Well! She’s never known anything else.” Then he went off to Lab 3.

I heard of it though.

I heard of the Big One. Everybody did. Not just in Queens. Everybody in the whole world heard of it. It just started in Queens. Then it went everywhere else.

Rauden came back saying, “Didn’t work.”

The phone rang.

While Henry and me bring the food things to this little kitchen behind Lab 3, we heard Rauden yell at Rini Jaffur from the Box Room. “Rini! No one is saying you didn’t love your daughters. You’ve had a terrible, terrible loss. But please! Give this some thought.”

He came back shaking his head and talking in a funny voice. “This was not what we discussed! This was not what we discussed! And Henry,” he says to his bro, and is, like, almost giggling, “wait till you hear what she thinks we discussed.”

Henry wheels off to a corner with him and they whisper.

Henry goes, “No way.”

“I will say this for the woman. She has an open mind. She was convinced I could bring it off. Well! I probably could.”

Ok, here I want to say, if you don’t understand this part, don’t worry, you will. Later, you will.

They just got very still. They stared at me. They stared at each other. Rauden put his hand on his head and even sagged, like somebody socked him. “Whoa!” he said.

Henry said, “Dude!”

Rauden goes, “Solve the egg problem real good. Plus! How pure would those genes be!”

What I’m saying is, this is really important. I just don’t know what it means. Half what these guys say, I don’t know what it means. Half what I say, they don’t know what I mean either.

Rauden is wheezing, even though he sat down in a chair. When he can breathe he goes, “Okay. I’m on it! I’m pitching Rini right now.” He came back saying, “Out of reach.”

Now they both sit down in the front room and look at me. Then they both started to giggle again. I’m just like, keep my eyes on Mumbai News. I mean, they are falling over, giggling.

“Bro!” goes Henry. “We have to get some better Proofs.”

Rauden says, “Don’t start, Henry.”

It is getting light. Still raining. Henry is in the Box Room, doing research. “This test is a seal-tight Proof. Sounds like what Bernie meant.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“It works.”

Rauden had been in front with me, but now he goes to the Box Room door and yells, “You know why? They put the girl in a bubble and expose her directly to unbelievable shit. If she’s still alive when they pull her out, it works. I messed with this girl enough.”

“Bro! How much better will it be for her to go back to goddamn Queens?”

“I’m not risking her goddamn life!” And Rauden storms off.

They are getting on my nerves.

Morning. Still raining.

Henry is not giving up. “How about this one? Hmm. That’s a very nutty name.”

“I’m not doing it, Henry.”

“Seal test, something like that. Bro! Don’t turn it off!” I could hear them bumping around and knocking things around. “Bro, stop. You’ll crash it.”

The lights went off. Then on. These guys.

Finally, I had it. “Seal
Room
test,” I call out from the sofa. I think they could hear from there.

I heard nothing for a minute but the rain. Then I saw them in that Box Room doorway, both of them a mess, because nobody but me had any sleep. They looked at me, then each other, like, bro, I thought I heard the sofa talk.

So I say back to them, “Seal Room test. S-E-A-L.”

Then they’re like, dude. It did. The sofa talked.

“Like the animal?” Henry asked.

“Like the goddamn room.”

They’re like, bro! The sofa cursed!

So I just said, “It is for Hygiene. You got to seal the room real tight, so the Tech is safe. But it is more like a bubble. You got to seal the bubble too.” Then I go, “That I heard.”

Finally Rauden came up to me and by now he is so tired he is shuffling in those stupid sandals. “I? Look at me. I’m going to ask you something, and you are not going to tell me you don’t know. Have you done this test?”

Whatever. I did this test.

vi

So this part is about the Seal Room test.

“Where would I even find the equipment?” That’s Rauden, giving everybody a hard time.

“You know the little bubble they blow up for quarantine, if they don’t got a regular quarantine to seal you in?” They both stare at me for a minute. They are still getting used to me talking.

Finally Henry just laughed, and Rauden says, “Where would I fucking find one of those?”

Henry goes, “Middletown General. My pal Morty Moon has access.”

“I’m not working with fucking Morty Moon.”

Henry rolled his eyes at me.

“And the pathogens?” goes Rauden. “Where am I going to find pathogens serious enough to be worth our while? If I even agree to run this test?”

I go, “The shed?”

Henry laughs again.

Henry and I check out the shed. It finally stopped raining. He could wheel his chair across these big flat stones in back, if I help. The shed is smelly and dark, but he found the old freezer unit and pulled out some cryoPaks. “Hmm, what’s the expiration date on product like this?” He reads off a label. “Pneumonic plague.”

I said, “I been exposed to it.”

He whistles. “Whoa. You are lucky to be alive.”

Whatever. “It is airborne though. That is hard to control.” I thought a minute. “I think they got a kit for this that is Hygienic for the Tech. It comes with the mask and all the rigging.”

Henry thought about it. “I’ll see what Morty Moon thinks.”

When we get back inside, Rauden is already drunk. “I’m not doing this!”

I tell Henry, “Get the kit with a lock file that says what went in and out of her. If they are doing it for medical, it is Proof.”

“Why else would they goddamn do it?” Rauden said from the Box Room.

I’m like, oh! The Box Room talks.

Between you and me, I’m not telling the Box Room why they would. He already had too much trouble with it. They do it for sport sometimes. Expose her to serious pathogens like pneumonic. Get drunk and place bets on how long she will stay alive. Sometimes they will use a filovirus like Ebola—that’s easy to find. The pay is very good.

Henry goes to Middletown in his special van and when he comes back with the stuff, he brings me to the shed and shows me the kit. It looks ok to me. I help him put the bubble in there. We pump it up and get the seal ready. Henry rigged up a monitor and I dragged the cable inside to the Box Room.

“You could fix it to work express,” I told Henry. “Forty-eight hours. Five days is better though.” Five days for the test, plus a few before and after—I could be staying here another week for sure, maybe more. “You got to leave meals and Beverage for the Subject. Sometimes they put a TV in.” In my dreams. “Five days, open the door. You could run her blood and urine tests before you let her out, if you like to be totally safe. She could even do the cleanup, for a Bonus.”

Rauden just got drunk and said, “I’m not doing this.” When he looked over the pathogen listing, he kept saying, “Dear God,” but he cleaned himself up, had coffee, and seems pretty sober when it’s time to start. He told Henry, “Nobody’s on the fucking grounds but the Subject and me when I do this. If you’re within five miles of this fucking test, you won’t have to worry about the risk.
Because I’ll shoot you, myself!
”