Chameleon (2 page)

“But ask yourself, if there are none bold enough to take the steps we propose, what will the world of tomorrow look like? I need not spell this out for you.” Behind him flashed images of disease, war, fetid water, and dying crops.

“The deaths of so many should indeed cause grave concern. And it is of grave concern to me, as I am sure it is to you. Yet, these souls will perish.” Here he sighed deeply, gazing downwards and shaking his head as if with regret. “Whether by our hand or another’s, they have, even the youngest of them, less than a century before they will be gone and forgotten.” Another sad shake of the head. “Such a waste. And while they live their squalid existences of abject poverty and suffering, they continue to consume and destroy the very planet that gives them life.”

More images of corpses and the dying, flies crawling along their diseased bodies.

“Who would prolong this level of suffering another hundred years, or another fifty, or even ten, when it lay in his power to put an end to it? To deliver mankind into the paradise for which he was intended by his creator?”

Here the music began to swell in quiet hopefulness.

“Once we have laid to rest the billions who consume and destroy, whose lives are but a daily torment even to themselves, we shall bring about a world without cripples or blindness, a world where no child lives in reach of the icy hand of cancer, where everyone has enough
and
enough time within which to enjoy it.”

The music crescendoed; we were back to the launching–of–tall–ships overture.

The video ended before I could tell what the audience’s response had been.

“What. Was. That?” I half–whispered the words, not sure I wanted an answer.

“We don’t know,” said Will.

“But this is a total game–changer from what I thought we were up against,” said Mickie. “It’s bigger than just killing off people with the gene for Helmann’s Disease.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “If I understood correctly, that dude is discussing the need to sacrifice a generation of people living now so that his new world can happen. I’d guess Geneses isn’t putting that on their website. They’re the biotech company in San Francisco, right? The one fighting for a cure for cancer or something?”

“That’s their public image,” Will replied.

“So, guys, I’m lost,” I said. “What does this video have to do with rippling or Helmann’s Disease?”

“Oh, there’s a connection.” Mickie spoke softly. “Sir Walter labeled the video ‘Helmann’s Speech.’”

Letter from Helga Gottlieb to her father, circa present day

My Most Dear and Revered Father,

I write to explain an undertaking which I believe will at once please you and benefit mankind. I have begun these past several months to compile a collection of essays and stories which one day I hope to use to tell to all the world the story of your Accession to Greatness, and thus the story of the Salvation of Mankind through your Glorious Revitalization of the Earth in the near future.

As you know, I have in my care the journals compiled during the years of your youth and containing your earliest efforts at the Improvement of the Race of Man. Hans believes I should ask your blessing. However, I trust I have your permission as I sift through these thousands of entries to create a Biography of the Greatest Man ever to live, that is, your own illustrious self.

Believe me to be, Sir, your most obedient daughter and devoted servant,

Helga Gottlieb

I lay awake listening to the howling wind as it chased a snow–storm toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. Sleep felt as far away as summer right now. I shivered and dove farther under the covers as rain began pelting my window.

Helmann—as in some descendant of
the
black–book–writing–Helmann who tortured children in the name of science—had plans to bring about the end of the world as we knew it. Will and I had already discovered that there was a connection between Geneses and Dr. Helga Gottlieb, the scientist who had taken over the lab where Will’s sister had secretly studied rippling with Dr. Pfeffer. Finding out that Helga was therefore connected to Helmann horrified me, but it wasn’t a great surprise either. All the signs pointed to her being descended from either the children in the black book or Helmann or both.

But glimpsing the plans of these dreadful eugenicists on video? And knowing that some of them wanted me alive for some purpose of theirs? My mind recoiled.

The wind gusted against my windows, the screens rattling like dancing bones. I thought of my grandmother’s home decorated for the
Dia de Los Muertos.

This was going to be a long night.

Mickie said this wasn’t a time to panic. Plus, for now, Sir Walter had directed us to continue laying low.

And that was hard, because, honestly, I thought we should turn the video over to the CIA or
Sixty Minutes
or something. But Sir Walter promised he had something better in mind. “A way to more thoroughly defeat this evil,” he’d written.

But what if he didn’t? What if he couldn’t? What if this year, this month, brought an end to the world as we knew it? Did I want to survive the kind of apocalypse Helmann envisioned? Like a drowning man grasping at flotsam, I clung to one truth: I would fight this. I’d fight with everything I had, given the chance. And that meant waiting until we got to France and met up with Sir Walter.

I twisted in my sheets, alert to a sudden tattoo of rain pelting dad’s pickup out front. Harsh, insistent, relentless, this storm—like our enemies. I listed the ones I knew by name: Helmann, Hans, Helga.

My mind returned, as it often did, to a stack of black, leather–bound books. Nearly a month ago, I’d invisibly followed a man who’d come to town asking questions about me. Hans, the stranger, had turned out to be Helga Gottlieb’s brother. Not only had he been in the area to learn about me, he’d also stopped at his sister’s lab at UC Merced to deliver those black books into her keeping. He’d been upset with himself for leaving them outside in his car. Helga had handled them like they were explosives. Or holy relics.

What was so significant about those black books? Were they as valuable as the one Sir Walter wanted from us? From what I’d seen, Pfeffer’s black book recorded experiments Helmann had inflicted upon children in World War II Germany. Did the other books record similar atrocities? Would Sir Walter find them useful as well?

I hungered to hold those books within my hands.

Frowning, I remembered the rainbow of sticky–notes that had been attached to some of the books in Hans’ car. They had my mother’s middle name “Elisabeth” written upon them, spelled the same unusual way she spelled it. Hans had referred to me as “the descendent of Elisabeth” when he warned Helga against harming me. What was so special about my mother? Or about me?

Those books haunted me.

***

When I’d turned sixteen last month, Dad had handed me the keys to his old Blazer. It ran loud, burned oil, and lacked a CD player. It was painted a hideous burnt orange. I loved it. California law forbids the newly–licensed teen to drive friends, but Will and I had found a work–around. Each morning before school, I drove to Will’s. Then we switched so that Will, who’d held his license over two years, could drive the two of us to school. Legally.

I missed our mornings pounding the pavement, but running with a school bag wasn’t practical, and the sun rose later each morning so it was now pitch black during the time when Will and I had run last summer.

The morning following the storm, the sun seemed to have missed the memo about dawn altogether. I drove to Will’s with my brights on, revving the ginormous engine in his driveway, my signal to Will each morning. He dashed out, slamming the cabin door. This was his signal to Mickie to get out of bed each day.

As he drove, I told him about the stack of black books and how they’d ruined my night’s sleep.

“And you say they looked just like the book Mickie got from Dr. Pfeffer?” he asked.

“The same,” I confirmed.

“I’d sure like to get a peek inside one of them,” said Will.

“Me too.”

“I wonder where Helga’s keeping them.”

“Assuming she still has them,” I said.

“It’s just, if Sir Walter thinks
one
black book could be useful, then maybe
several
black books would be even more useful.”

I squirmed. Now that Will spoke it aloud, the idea of retrieving additional books sounded very, very bad.

Distracted, Will hit the bad pothole on Main.

“Hey, respect the ride,” I said.

“Dude, I
love
the ride,” Will replied. “I want to
marry
the ride so it can have my children.”

“Shut up,” I chortled.

Gwyn emerged from Las ABC to my right. She glared at me, angry, and we both turned our heads quickly away from one another. But as Will slowed to turn into the school parking lot, I looked back one last time. Slowly, deliberately, Gwyn shook her head at me, frustrated that I seemed determined to remain with Will. It was so unfair, having to leave Gwyn’s friendship behind so that I could keep Will’s secrets. I turned away from my former friend, resting my head on the window.

It took effort to bring myself back into the present, to walk away from my regrets.

After a moment’s silence I spoke. “No way can we go back there and get the books.”

Will shrugged.

“Will, I mean it. Helga is dangerous. And crazy.”

Will’s mouth pulled into a frown as he eased the Blazer into a parking spot. “I’ve already been there, you know. Nothing bad happened.”

I nodded. Will and Mickie had almost left Las Abuelitas for good last month when I’d described my encounter with Helga at UC Merced. Mickie had been scared to stay after that. But on their way out of town, they’d crashed their car. While his sister got stitched up and rested under medication, Will had snuck off to Helga’s lab to see what he could learn.

“I’ve thought about going back to UC Merced a couple times,” Will said.

“It would be such a bad idea,” I said.

“Really bad.”

So why did I get the feeling he was already planning a second trip?

I worried about it through Madame Evans’ description of the Parisian
Métro
subway system. I worried about it as Gwyn glared at us from across the lunchroom. I worried about it while scrawling answers to a biology quiz.

Will met me at my Blazer after school. “So when do you think we should go?”

He must have been thinking about this all day just like me.

“Your sister will
never
let you do this,” I said, slamming the passenger door shut.

“You’re one–hundred–percent about that,” said Will. “Which is why I’m thinking this Wednesday. She’s going to a concert in Fresno.”

“Of course she is,” I said, resting my head on the window. Outside heavy clouds wafted across the wintry sky. “Let me guess: you just bought the tickets?”

Will guffawed. “No, but that’s a great idea for the next time I want to do something she’d disapprove.” Will leaned over to fist–bump my shoulder, and the car swerved across the yellow line.

“You!” I said, shoving him back. “Focus on steering straight.”

Will placed his hands at 10:00 and 2:00.

I groaned. “So what’s your plan?”

Excerpted from the private journal of Helga Gottlieb, circa present day

Within the pages of his journals, I seek the secrets my father still withholds from me. Why the repeated problems with the offspring I breed? I am certain Father has already discovered the answers I seek. He keeps these secrets to himself for what reason? Am I not the one scientist who could assist him in his Glorious Goals for the Improvement of Man?

My brother Fritz is nothing compared to me. A dabbler. Has Fritz dared to create life upon the principles we follow? Bah. He is a coward. An amateur. Alone of Father’s children, I have parented a new generation. And with the dispassion required of a true follower of Science, I have eliminated those who proved inferior—so many failed attempts to bring into being the New Humanity. Yes, I denied the beating heart of the mother within me, rather than let inferior beings live.

And yet Father will not tell me what I am sure he knows.

Nor can I find anything within these volumes that I did not learn long decades ago studying alone in my laboratories.

I am determined. I will learn how to eliminate the flaws within my own offspring. I will create the New Humanity.

Wednesday night arrived. We’d decided to run to UCM since we didn’t want anyone recognizing and tracing my Blazer. And so, on a dark November night, less than three weeks from our trip to France, we met at Will’s cabin to execute our heist.

I had come up with an idea that I thought slightly brilliant. “I’ll wear a double layer of black pantyhose over my face,” I said. “In case Helga has set up cameras or something.”

“You’re making a big assumption,” said Will.

“It just seemed like the kind of thing she
might
do.”

“That’s not the assumption I mean,” said Will. “You’re assuming I’m going to let you show your face in her lab.”

“Will, I’m being completely logical. She’s never seen you. She doesn’t know you exist. It’s important that we keep it that way.” I paused before playing my ace. “Your sister’s safety is hanging in the balance, too.”

He scowled at me. “Fine. You get to be the one who grabs the books. But I don’t like it. And I’m wearing the pantyhose hat, too,” he said. “Just in case.”

I examined his expression, dark and determined. “Fair enough. But you have to find your own pair.” I grinned, certain this was something his sister wouldn’t have lying around.

“Mick got some once for an interview,” said Will, undaunted. “Hope they’re still in her drawer.” He rippled and I heard him rummaging in his sister’s room, opening a drawer and slamming it shut.