Homing (10 page)

Humming quietly to herself, she went into the kitchen, then stopped abruptly, her lighthearted tune dying on her lips.

Sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee held halfway to his lips as he regarded her darkly through his deep-sunk eyes, was Otto Owen.

it was the first time since the wedding that he'd set foot in this house, and though Russell had tried to convince her that his absence was motivated by a desire to give them their privacy, Karen was certain she knew better. Now the first words Otto spoke Proved she'd been right.

"When Paula was alive, she always had breakfast ready by the time Russell came downstairs."

A knot of anger formed in Karen's belly, and the cheerful mood that had flooded over her when she'd awakened this morning shattered- But she kept her voice even, determined not to rise to his bait. "I guess she was a better woman than I am," she observed. "But I think I'll wait until fall to start getting up before the sun." The back door opened and Julie came in, hesitating when she saw Otto, and giving her mother a questioning glance. Hoping Otto would miss her silent exchange with her daughter, Karen rolled her eyes just enough to let Julie know that Otto was on the warpath, Otto didn't miss the gesture. "I'm not any blinder than I am deaf," he growled, his eyes fixing on Karen as she went to the refrigerator, pulled out the egg container, and began cracking eggs into a bowl. "And you don't need to keep those in the fridge," he went on. "Fresh eggs keep just fine on the counter. 'Course, you'd be used to the store-boughten ones, and those are a week old by the time you see 'em. And they call 'em fresh!" He drained his coffee, then held his cup out for a refill, Karen's eyes flicked to the pot of coffee that Stood at the far end of the counter.

Closer to Otto than to herself. Did he really expect her to stop what she was doing, take his cup, refill it for him, and then hand it back to him?

He wasn't an invalid, for heaven's sake!

She opened her mouth, about to ask him if he'd turned into a cripple during the night, when she changed her mind. He's just old, she reminded herself. He's set in his ways, and the only women he's known his whole life were farm women. Saying nothing, she took Otto's cup, refilled it, and returned it to him.

Julie, her eyes darkening with anger at what she'd just seen, seemed about to say something to Otto, but Karen signaled her to let it go. "Can I pour you a cup, too, Julie?" she offered, as Otto accepted his cup without a word of thanks.

"It's okay, Mom," Julie said, her eyes on Otto, who seemed oblivious to her furious gaze. "Some of us can do things for ourselves." Taking the pot from Karen, she carried it to the table and mimed pouring the steaming liquid over Otto's head as she passed behind him.

Karen was just starting to cook the first of the omelettes when the rest of the family trooped in through the back door.

"Uh-oh, we're early," Russell said, pausing at the stove to kiss Karen on the cheek before moving on to the sink to scrub his hands.

"Or I'm late," Karen replied. "Kevin, could you give Julie a hand setting the table? There's orange juice in the refrigerator, and I think there's still some jam left. If there isn't, get a new jar from the pantry."

"What can I do?" Russell asked.

"Make some toast, while I finish the omelettes." She hesitated, then glanced at her father-in-law. "Will you be having breakfast with us, Otto?"

Otto's brows arched. "Not if you're plannin' to put me to work, too. It's one thing doing women's work when you don't have a woman in the house."

Russell started to interrupt his father, but before he could say anything, Julie broke in, her voice taking on a syrupy tone that instantly caught not only Otto's attention, but everyone else's as well. "Why, Mr. Owen, we simply wouldn't think of asking a man to do anything around the kitchen," she drawled. "You just sit there, and let us womenfolk take care of you." Quickly shoving a place setting in front of him, she moved to the stove and took the plate containing the first omelette from her mother. "Molly, you're a girl, too, so you can pour Mr. Owen's orange juice for him. And don't worry about filling it too full, because if he spills any of it, we'll just clean it right up for him, won't we?"

Molly, not quite understanding the game but anxious to Play it, scurried toward the refrigerator.

Knowing the showdown between his grandfather and the three newest members of the family had finally come, Kevin backed away from the table to see what would happen next.

Karen, about to put a stop to Julie's performance before it went too far, glanced at Russell, who read her intentions perfectly, And silently signaled her to let the scene play itself out.

Julie set the omelette in front of Otto. "Can you feed Yourself, Mr. Owen, sir?" she asked with exaggerated servility. "Because I'd just be more than happy to sit right down and help you." As she dropped onto the chair next to Otto and began cutting his Omelette up for him, Karen decided the game had gone far enough.

But before she could say anything, both Kevin and Russell began to laugh.

Otto's face went scarlet and the vein in his forehead throbbed. He stood up and stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the screen door behind him.

Julie, starting to giggle herself, suddenly saw the look in her mother's eye. "But he acts like you're nothing but a maid around here." she began.

"And I can deal with it myself," Karen told her.

"Oh, come on," Russell said, but this time it was Karen who motioned to him not to interfere.

"He's an old man, and nothing you Or I can say is going to change him," Karen told her daughter. "All we can do is be tolerant of him, and hope people are tolerant of us when we get to be that age."

Julie hesitated, about to reply, then reconsidered. Argument would be useless.

"I-I guess I'd better go apologize to him she said, deliberately leaving the words hanging, in the hope her mother might yet give her a reprieve.

'I guess you had," Karen said.

"I'll go with you," Kevin offered as Julie started toward the back door.

"Oh, no you won't," Karen told him. "Julie got herself into this alone, and she can get out of it alone, too. The rest of us will have breakfast."

As Julie started off in search of Otto Owen, Karen began serving the rest of her family.

Carl Henderson had been about to turn up the Owens' driveway when he'd seen first Julie, then Russell, Kevin, and Molly, head from the barn up to the kitchen door.

Otto, he assumed, was either already there or in his own house, if he was still acting the way he had been last week.

Which meant that no one would be anywhere near the beehives, and he could take as much time as he wanted without having to answer anyone's questions.

He parked his Jeep on the county road, carefully positioning the Cherokee so the barn stood between it and Russell's house, then opened his field pack and took out one of the small brown vials he'd filled in his lab only the night before.

Henderson didn't think the job would take more than half an hour, since he'd already identified the queen cells in half of the three dozen beehives on the Owen farm.

Much bigger than the other cells, they were easy to spot, and there were never more than a few of them in any given hive.

A single drop of fluid in each cell would be enough, and then all he'd have to do was wait.

Wait, and watch, and mark the new queens as they hatched.

If he was right, and the contents of the vials did the job, Carl Henderson would be a hero.

If it failed, nothing would happen at all, and he would simply keep working steadily in his private lab, laboring over a new solution until he finally got it right and the problem was solved at last.

The Problem.

That was how everyone thought of it now. As if it were capitalized, like the title of a movie or something.

It had started three years ago, when UniGrow released a new fertilizer that the company Promised would double the alfalfa crop. It had been tested Against everything anyone could think of, and no one had seen any problems, let alone what had become known as The Problem.

The fertilizer seemed perfect, containing nothing poisonous to any living being, no pollutants to taint the water or contaminate the soil.

Totally biodegradable, totally environmentally neutral.

And it hadn't killed the bees-that had been one of the first things UniGrow had tested for, since no one could raise alfalfa--or much of anything else-without bees, Carl himself had led the tests, and been as enthusiastic as everyone else.

He had also been the first, a few months later, to discover the one big flaw of the fertilizer: though it didn't kill the bees exposed to it, it made them sterile. Slowly, all the hives in the area had died.

And that, a year later, had become The Problem.

For two years UiriiGrow had been working on a solution, but so far had come up with nothing.

Carl Henderson, in the meantime, had been conducting his own research in the privacy of his own lab, applying all the knowledge of his years of study and experimentation to the problem. And today, contained within the brown vial, he held in his hand what might finally be the solution everyone was looking for.

A biological solution to a biological problem.

If it worked the way Henderson thought it would, the queen cells into which it was injected would produce bees whose descendants were immune to the effects of the fertilizer, and would continue reproducing new generations.

Not only would UniGrow be relieved of the burden of having to bring in new hives each time a crop season began, but relieved as well of having to pay the enormous damages the courts were already beginning to award the local farmers whose fields had been affected by the fertilizer.

instead the company would begin to enjoy the profits the new fertilizer, marketed in conjunction with Henderson's altered strain of bees, would generate. And Carl Henderson, whose genius had discovered the answer, would reap at least a percentage of those profits.

The Problem would be solved; everyone would be happy If it worked. Henderson was not yet quite certain it would. In fact, the last refinement he'd experimented with bad resulted primarily in the increased virulence of the bees' venom.

It was that venom, Carl-knew, that Molly Spellman had reacted to the previous week, though he'd been careful not to contradict the various doctors who had simply assumed the girl had had a violent allergic reaction to an ordinary bee. The child, after all, had recovered, so no real harm had been done, and Henderson was almost certain that his newest creation would have no bad side effects.

Carefully removing a hypodermic needle from its case, Carl filled it, returned it to the case, then put the case into one of his shirt pockets, snapping the flap closed just to be on the safe side.

Leaving the Cherokee unlocked, he crossed the road and started along the dirt track that led to the beehives which he himself had placed on the far side of the farm, well out of sight of the house.

There were thirty-six of them, placed in three well spaced rows of twelve hives each. Each of the hives was four boxes high, and Henderson had marked several of the boxes with the numbers of the frames that contained the queen cells he planned to treat. Glancing around to be sure he was alone, he set to work, carefully lifting off the first two half-depth supers that formed the highest levels of the hive. Setting them aside, he turned his attention to the now exposed full-sized super, which was nothing more than a white-painted box designed to hold a rack of brood frames. The design was simple, and hadn't changed substantially since L. L. Langstroth had invented it in 1851.

The key to it was the precise spacing of the frames inside, which allowed a bee space of exactly five-eighths of an inch. Had there been less space between the frames, the bees simply wouldn't have used them; more, and they would have begun filling it in. Very gently, Henderson lifted the fourth frame out of its slot. Heavy with comb, the wooden rectangle was covered with bees, but as Carl lifted the tray into the sunlight, most of them quickly took off, or dropped back into the squirming mass below.

Easily finding the queen cell he'd identified earlier in the week, Henderson carefully pierced its wax cap with the hypodermic needle and injected a drop of the fluid from the brown vial into it. Withdrawing the needle from the cell, he plugged the tiny hole by scraping a fragment of wax over it, pressing the wax into place with his little finger. As soon as he slid the frame back into its slot, the bees would go to work, trimming the plug or adding wax to it until it would blend so perfectly as to be undiscoverable.

And inside the cell, the contents of the solution would go to work on the developing bee. If it worked, the descendants of that queen would be impervious to -the ravages of the fertilizer.

If it didn't, the queen would simply die, and Henderson would return to his lab to begin again.

Finishing with the first hive, he replaced the top supers, then moved on to the second. He was just about to lift its lid when he heard a sound behind him.

A slight gasp.

The kind of gasp someone makes when he comes upon something unexpected.

Or frightening.

Stiffening, Carl Henderson straightened up, then slowly turned to face whoever was behind him, already prepared to explain his presence as nothing more than a routine check on the hives.

Henderson's own breath caught as he recognized Julie Spellman. It was the first time he'd seen her since the wedding, and now, as his eyes locked on hers, he felt his hands clench into tight fists.

Once again, her long black hair was cascading down her back, and once again her dark eyes were fixed on him, just as they had fixed on him at the wedding.

His emotions churned and his fingers began to work.

Don't! he told himself. Don't go near her. Don't touch her. Don't even look at her!

Yet he couldn't keep himself from looking at her.

His eyes fastened on her, and in the deep recesses of his mind, darkness began to close around him.