The Ones (21 page)

The government was working to re-engineer the Ones.

Cody's paranoia was justified.

And his father was on the wrong team.

James realized that Cody might even blame him for this. And even worse, he knew that if he had shared this information with Cody, she would surely do something terrible.

James shuddered as he realized this was now a very real possibility. Taryn had lifted the memo from his pocket. There was no question that she had shared it with Kai. Would Kai share it with Cody? James wasn't sure. Kai was an opportunist; he would do whatever was best for him. Surely, at some point when he needed Cody's help, he would fill her in. James hoped that hadn't happened yet.

His thoughts turned to a more practical responsibility: Should he warn his father that the New Weathermen had evidence against him? Regardless of whether Kai had told Cody, the memo would surely prompt him to act on his own. James thought back to his brief experience at their meeting in the church and knew his dad's life was probably in danger. He had even threatened as much when he confronted his father, but James had never planned to actually give the memo to Kai and put his dad at risk. Now a more gnawing question sickened him to even think about.

Did James even want to save him?

He knew the answer to the question was no; the betrayal was too great. But he also knew his responsibility as a son, as a family member, and as a moral human being might require him to say something. James still didn't know what he was going to do when, to his surprise, he walked into his house and found his father waiting for him with a couple of tackle boxes at his feet.

“Get ready,” Arthur said. “We're going fishing. Don't worry, I packed you a bag.”

James would have thought he was joking, except his dad was wearing his old mesh fishing vest, the tiny pockets stuffed with different lures. Not exactly comfortable to drive in, but it definitely set a mood. And then his brother came down the stairs with a backpack slung over his shoulder, and James realized that a Livingston men's fishing trip was seriously being forced on him.

“I can't,” James said. “You two go on without me—it's fine.”

“You don't have a choice,” Arthur said, and handed him a tackle box. He headed for the door and leaned in to James's ear. “Come on. We need to talk.”

Arthur walked out to the car, and Michael followed him, throwing another bag on top of James. “Shotgun,” Michael said.

James started to accept that this trip was not optional. His dad wanted to resolve what had happened between them. James knew Michael was part of that, too. For all he knew, maybe they would jam a syringe into his heart and bring him home as a brain-dead zombie. But however unlikely it was, James still held out hope that his father could make things right. That somehow what James had discovered in the lab was all some big mistake. He knew it was childish to wish for that, to keep up the fantasy that his dad was some infallible, indestructible protector who never did anything wrong. Only six-year-olds thought that. In reality, fathers could be weak, petty, evil, and selfish. They didn't spend their entire lives lifting you up on their shoulders and letting your ice-cream cone drip down into their hair. That was what James thought of when he pictured him and his dad. He wondered if Arthur ever conjured up the same image when he was working on the Vaccine.

Apparently not, James decided. No one could have such conflicting thoughts at the same time.

James trudged out to the car, ready to hear what his father had to say. But as his father steered their car out of the driveway, he made it clear that James would have to wait a little longer.

“We have a lot to talk about, the three of us,” Arthur said. “Let's wait until we're at the cabin.”

They drove the three hours north in silence. The roads got narrower and the shadows from the pines grew longer, and James sat alone in the back, waiting to hear why his father was trying to transform him into an inferior version of his true self.

*   *   *

The cabin was basically an old mining shack that their family had spruced up a little over the years. It was a short walk to the Keswick River, where it was still a wide, lazy stream, well before the powerful rapids that rushed past Shasta. Up here you could belly flop off a rock and practically smother a dozen fat rainbow trout. Catching them on a hook was a different matter—one that involved a practiced alchemy of fly casting, timing, and impossible patience. Still, James and his family had made many successful hauls from the river, and even though the three of them had not gone out there together in a long time, he knew they'd have no trouble wading in, spacing out fifty feet from one another, and flicking beautiful casts into the shallows.

It was late afternoon now, and Arthur was looking James in the eye. “When I heard what they were planning, I was sick to my stomach,” his father said.

They were sitting on stumps outside the cabin. A fire blazed in front of them, hissing and crackling sparks into the clear air. Arthur had asked James and Michael to come sit with him and listen.

“The highest levels of the government saw what was coming and needed a way to stop it. They didn't want to do anything ugly—anything violent—but they knew they couldn't allow things to continue on naturally. Inaction would lead to their extinction. Every one of us, of course, has an instinct for self-preservation. So they began a program to develop a vaccine.”

James saw that his father had transformed into professor mode now. He was going to explain himself as clearly as possible.

“The original idea was to introduce a virus with a kill switch that would unravel all the previously engineered genetic material. But they couldn't get it to work right. The virus couldn't differentiate between organic genetic coding and DNA that had been manipulated. And even worse, would that really change the Ones in any meaningful way? Could it make a fully grown person become shorter? Turn their eyes from green to … gray? It didn't make any sense, and they realized that. So they threw up their hands and said, ‘Well, if all these kids are too special for their own good, why not give them a handicap?' The next idea was for a virus that slightly inhibited every function of the brain. Reasoning, coordination, memory … everything. But when they started testing it, they couldn't calibrate it correctly. It was like using a bazooka instead of a scalpel, and the lab rats were waking up blind or paralyzed or not at all. That's when they called me.”

Arthur paused, becoming a bit emotional. James saw that Michael was watching in rapt silence, which was understandable, considering that he was hearing all of this for the first time. To James, nothing his father had said was that surprising. He had already come to realize that the government was capable of such ill-conceived atrocities. What he wanted to know was why his dad agreed to help.

Arthur continued. “They knew from some of my previous work that I could scale a virus to work at just the right amplitude. ‘Yeah, but on a vegetable,' I said. I told them I would never consider working on a project that would do this to people. And then I thought about it. I couldn't sleep for weeks. I knew they were pressing forward. I knew how bad their current version was—it was like a full chemical lobotomy. And I knew I could do better. So I decided I would figure out the safe, acceptable version of this. A vaccine that would satisfy them but not actually hurt anyone. Not actually hurt my own son.”

James tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “So you agreed to work on the project to sabotage it?”

“If only that were possible. I knew that might work for a short period of time, but I couldn't impede it forever. There are dozens of other labs across the country working on it. I needed to come up with something real, as fast as possible, that they would still plausibly accept as solving the problem. So I convinced them that a fair handicap on the Ones would be a ten percent reduction in brain function. Comparable, I argued, to the advantage they had been given at birth. The NIH agreed that if I could devise a way to ensure this exact handicap, that would be an acceptable vaccine. So now do you see the position I was in? I could sit on my hands and watch them approve some barbaric, mind-numbing procedure, or I could help and steer them toward something more civilized.”

Arthur looked to James, pleading for him to understand. But James refused to accept this binary excuse.

“Dad, you're acting like you had no other choice. Either do nothing or work for them. What about a third option, the obvious one? Try to stop this whole thing from happening! Scream from the rooftops! Warn people! Did you ever consider that?” James yelled.

“It's easy to say that, but there was no way to stop it. I would have been silenced. That means
killed
, James. So I tried to find a solution I could live with. And let's remember, somewhere in this technology, there is the power to make miracles. To end birth defects. To abolish genetic diseases. To prevent an immeasurable amount of human suffering. We are morally compelled to do that if we know how.”

“And what about me?” James asked, incredulous. “Am I supposed to rush down to the lab to get ‘handicapped' by ten percent? What the hell does that even mean? Why should I be changed at all? I didn't do anything wrong! Forcing me to change one hair on my head is too much. It's not fair.”

“James, it is unfair. Life is unfair. But most of all, this mind-blowing idea of engineering our babies is unfair.
You
are unfair. I know it's not your fault, but we messed up. This country messed up. Your mother and I messed up. I came to realize that as I watched you and your brother grow up. I wish I could have undone it. And then, when the government wanted to do something much worse, I saw that I could. In a dignified and measured way. I could fix our family.”

James believed that his father's heart had been in the right place. But it was still hard to accept that he wanted to change James, to alter the identity of his own son. The anger from that would not go away.

Michael reached out to put a hand on Arthur's shoulder and spoke for the first time. “I think you did the right thing,” he said, then turned to James. “He was trying to protect you. And to help us. You can't hold that against him.”

“We are not guinea pigs, Michael. You can't just mess around with who we are—I don't care how
dignified
it is.”

Michael laughed. “James, you are a guinea pig. A science experiment gone wrong. You must know that, right? Dad is trying to fix this for you in the best way possible. If you can't accept that and forgive him, then good riddance. Don't bother being a part of this family anymore.”

Michael stood up and walked away from the fire. James turned to check his father's reaction. He stared off after Michael dejectedly.

“A long way to go, I see,” Arthur said, then paused for a moment. He and James stared into the fire. “Look, James, please don't listen to that ultimatum about leaving the family. Of course that's not true. But I really do hope you think about what I was trying to do. And I hope you can forgive me. I am proud to call you my son. I love you. And I will always love you, no matter what you think of me.”

Arthur stood up and was about to leave James alone by the fire. But he stopped, knelt down next to him, and leaned into his ear.

“I would have never given you the shot. I would have made sure you had a placebo. As long as Michael believed it was real, that was the only thing that was important. I could never actually do that to you.”

James felt tears well up in his eyes. This was the father he so desperately wanted to believe still existed. Not the evil scientist but the loving genius who would let him drip ice cream into his hair. A wave of relief flooded his brain. And then a question.

“When you gave me the placebo vaccine … would you have told me it was fake?”

Arthur smiled at James. “Would I have needed to?” And then he walked away.

*   *   *

They were in the river early the next morning, all three of them, spaced out at just the perfect distance that made it impossible to talk. James lazily cast his fly back and forth, but he wasn't thinking about catching fish; he was trying to process what his father had said the night before. Even if it was exactly what he'd wanted to hear, James still had some reservations. For one, it was a little too convenient. And more important, there was no way to prove that his father wasn't still lying. His claim that he never would have administered the Vaccine to James sounded great, but it was about a hypothetical moment in the future. And what about everyone else?

As James thought about it more deeply, though, he decided that his father deserved the benefit of the doubt. For seventeen years, he had done nothing but look out for James. And it hadn't been that easy, with Michael always resenting him and his mother still holding a torch for Thomas. His father was smart. He understood that the rise of the Equality Movement meant that there was no chance for a perfect resolution to the Ones controversy. So he had inserted himself into the problem to protect James the best he could. Maybe it all made sense.

James knew the ball was in his court. He had to confess that he had lost the memo and warn his father. Whatever Kai was planning to do, James had to help his father stay safe. And when they got back to Shasta, James could try to convince Kai that his father wasn't the real enemy. That would be a tough sell, obviously. Maybe his father would have to do that himself. Look Kai in the eye. Explain how he got Cody back. And justify the horrifying project being run in his laboratory.

James considered the best way to make this all happen. It was delicate but possible. He looked down the river at Michael and his father. The sun was high above them now, perfect for a shadowless cast. His father looked up and waved. After a moment, Michael nodded at him. For the first time in years, James felt a thread of hope running through his family.