The Wayfarer King (45 page)

The lock clicked, and the guard opened the door. “Your identification, please?” He held out an identity scanner. Once she’d pressed her right thumb onto the pad, the scanner blinked, and her name and image appeared on its screen. “Thank you, Dr. Marsh. Come in.”

She ducked inside, eager to escape the crowd.

“Did you hear that?” someone asked. “She’s Henry Marsh’s daughter.” That prompted a chorus of impolite shouts.

The guard pulled the weapon from the holster at his hip. The crowd instantly quieted and took a collective step back. “Get off the grounds,” he shouted to the protesters. “You’re not supposed to demonstrate on the property. Want me to call the cops?” After hurling a few insults, they began to retreat to the public sidewalk.

When the door closed and locked with a satisfying click, Katie relaxed her shoulders, releasing the tension. She cast a final, sorrowful glance at the sick fellow outside. He would become one of the unfortunate millions Molio would kill this year. It was for him, and for all who would come after him, that the scientists in this building worked toward a cure, or as her father often put it, “a contingency plan.”

“Please check in.” The guard gestured at the reception desk several yards away.

The receptionist was on the phone and tapping his computer screen as she approached. Once he disconnected the call, he continued tapping. “Welcome to the Center. How may— Katie!”

“Hi, Pump.” She held out her hand. His name was Glen, but she couldn’t remember ever calling him that. “Good to see you again.”

Pump stood to shake her hand. His six-three frame, well-packed with muscle, gave him the look of a bouncer, but his dark brown shirt and khaki trousers looked like they came out of an ad for men’s business casual-wear. “So you’re our new reproductive scientist,” he said. “Everyone’s thrilled you’re joining us.”

Probably not everyone. “Hopefully I’ll be able to make a difference.”

“I’ll call Human Resources and let them know you’re here.”

She looked around the visitors’ lounge while Pump placed the call. Not much had changed since she’d first started accompanying her father here after school as a child. In fact, the chrome-trimmed orange and gray faux leather furniture had decorated the airy lounge since before she’d left for college thirteen years earlier.

“Someone will be down in a few minutes,” Pump said. “I guess I should get used to calling you Dr. Marsh now that you’re an employee.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Two Dr. Marshes might be confusing. Katie will do fine.” Her father, the world-renowned, Nobel prize-winning scientist who’d first engineered the saphers — the
Homo sapiens heredis
— had been working at the Center since before she was born. After her mother had died of Molio, Katie had practically grown up here. Her new colleagues would be hard-pressed to see her as an adult, let alone call her Dr. Marsh.

He reached down to unlock a drawer. “Let me get you a visitor’s pass.” After activating the temporary badge from his computer, he handed it to her. “Later today, you’ll get your permanent badge, which will also give you access to the parking garage, so you don’t have to deal with them anymore.” Pump nodded his head at the demonstrators in front of the building. She clipped it to her lapel and made small talk with Pump while she waited.

At last, he gestured at the security screening portal and the locked glass door beyond it. On the other side of the glass security partition, a semi-circular desk sat near the elevators, manned by a uniformed guard. A woman wearing a yellow pantsuit stood by, hands clasped before her. “You can go through the scanner now. She’s ready for you.”

Katie stepped into the security portal. When its green indicator lit up, the lock mechanism clicked, and the door slid open.

The human resources representative showed Katie to her new office, three doors down the hall from her father’s. As eager as she was to get started with her work, she had forms to fill out, volumes of legal documents to read and sign, and colleagues to meet. The facilities manager came by to set up her building access. The computer system administrator gave her an authentication device to provide network access.

Finally alone, she sat at the veneer-topped metal desk, kicked off her shoes and leaned back in her chair. Her office was quiet and stark, but with some soft music playing, a few pictures on the walls, and some colorful drapes over the dull beige blinds, the place would warm up. She inserted her Fed card into the computer and began filling out the benefit and tax forms, submitting them with a tap on the screen.

A knock on her door drew her gaze up. Her father leaned in and pushed a lock of hair, now more salt than pepper, from his eyes. “Hey, Sweet. Glad you’re here. We have a problem in the infirmary. Can you give us a hand?”

“You bet.” Grateful for something more interesting to do than new-hire paperwork, Katie put her Fed card into her purse and shoved it into a desk drawer. “What’s wrong?” She stood to take off her suit jacket and laid it across the back of her chair.

The crease between his eyebrows deepened. “It’s one of the girls.”

Outside, Katie and her father climbed onto the rear-facing seat of a solar-powered golf cart waiting near the back door. The driver, clad in a white jumpsuit and straw hat, removed his sunglasses to clean them.

“Where to, Dr. Marsh?”

“To the infirmary. Hurry,” Dad said.

They raced across campus, narrowly missing a couple of staffers going about their business, and hurried into the infirmary. Eagerness and anticipation knotted Katie’s stomach. If luck was on her side, she would delay — or prevent — a miscarriage today.

Inside, a girl lay on an examination table with her feet in metal stirrups. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. The age of consent had been lowered for the sake of repopulation, but girls this young weren’t equipped to handle the heartache of what she might face today. Her bare legs, draped with a gown, were spread wide. Seated on a stool between her knees, Dr. Barnes readied a uterine evacuation instrument.

Damn it. She was too late. Katie grabbed a surgical gown from the supply cabinet and pulled it on over her clothes. “Stephen, have you tried administering twenty cc’s of diaphrenepalon directly into the uterine wall?” After years of addressing him as Dr. Barnes, calling him Stephen felt strange, but they were colleagues now.

Stephen scowled at her. “That won’t do any good, Kate. She started bleeding last night but didn’t tell anyone until this morning. There are no signs of life.”

“I want the medicine,” the girl said, sitting forward. “Please, save my baby.”

“Lie back, Jessica,” the doctor said.

Near the door, her father talked in hushed tones with one of the nurses, a young man whose vantage point robbed Jessica of her privacy.

Katie pulled the modesty curtain around them and picked up the girl’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s too late. There’s nothing we can do.” She looked familiar, maybe one of Evelyn’s friends.

Jessica hunched forward, stifling a scream. Her claws dug into the back of Katie’s hand. Sweat stuck her coarse, black hair to her face and neck. After a moment, she collapsed back onto the table. “It hurts so bad.”

“I know, hon.” Katie dipped a cloth into the pan of warm water on a nearby table, wrung it out and wiped the girl’s brow. “Your body’s trying to expel the embryo. Dr. Barnes is going to help.”

“Jessica, you’re going to feel a slight pressure now,” the doctor said.

Jessica shook her head violently. “No, no, no. Please.”

Katie bit her lip, wishing she’d been hired last week, wishing Jessica had come to the infirmary when the bleeding started. There might have been the smallest of chances to fix it before the embryo dislodged.

The instrument hummed its low, quiet dirge. Jessica cried, and Katie held her hand. When it was over, the doctor gently removed her feet from the stirrups, patted her knee and stood. Jessica threw her arms around Katie and sobbed. “I loved her. She was going to be so beautiful.”

For a long moment, Jessica clutched her and cried, while Katie ran her hand across the spiny crest, which now lay flat against Jessica’s back. Finally, Jessica pulled away. Her golden irises looked brilliant contrasted with the bloodshot whites. Her pupils were thin slits under the bright lights of the examination room. “Will I ever be able to have a baby?”

Katie squeezed Jessica’s shoulder. “Sweetie, of course you will. It’s why I’m here — to help figure this out.”

“I don’t want to keep going through this if I can never get past seven weeks. What’s the point?”

“It hurts,” Katie said gently as she rubbed Jessica’s back, “and you feel hopeless now, but we can’t stop trying.”

Jessica lowered her head. “I’m a failure. My stupid uterus is a piece of trash.” She pulled her knees to her chest, crossed her arms over them and bowed her head.

Katie felt like she’d been punched in the chest. “Oh, Honey, if you could see yourself through my eyes, you’d see a strong, beautiful, young sapher woman. You’d see how important you are to the future of
Homo sapiens
. You’ll get through this, Jessica. It’s not your fault. It’s a flaw in the genetic code, and it’s my job to find it and fix it.”

Jessica shrugged, head still bowed.

Inspired, Katie stepped over to the gynecologist, who was extracting the receptacle containing the embryo and placenta from the instrument. “Stephen, could I have the em— the baby?”

He looked at her as though she were stealing his favorite marble. “It belongs to the immunology lab. They use it—”

“I just thought Jessica would like to say goodbye.”

He blushed. “Oh. Yes, of course. I misunderstood. Here.” He handed her the smooth, white receptacle. It had rounded edges and a circular opening with a black release knob. “Let me know when you’re finished.”

Katie carried it to the exam table and gently touched Jessica’s arm. “Would you like to say a few words to her?”

Jessica lifted her head and gazed at the receptacle. “She’s in here?”

“Yes.”

Jessica cradled the receptacle in both hands as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I love you, baby, even though you’re gone. I wish I could’ve held you in my arms, smelled your baby smell, and looked into your pretty eyes to tell you this. My body’s broken. Now my heart is, too. I’ll have this special love for you in my heart forever.”

“That was beautiful, Jessica.” Katie took the receptacle.

Jessica sniffled. Katie handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose. “Would you pick a name for her, Dr. Kate?”

Katie blinked in surprise. Her eyes welled with tears, and a lump formed in her throat. The face of the sapher she’d given birth to fourteen years ago came to mind: Evelyn, a sweet, innocent girl in her first pregnancy. She would be facing a similar fate if Katie couldn’t figure this out and fix it. “How about Raquel? It means ‘the innocent.’”

Ryder Stone rose with his uniformed escort fourteen floors to the top of the administration building. Was he about to meet with Katie? What was she doing at the Center? Did she have Molio?

When the doors opened, they walked past several administrators’ offices to the big one in the corner. Two huge windows drew Ryder’s eyes when he walked in. From this floor, he could see the vast desert stretching toward the mountains in the distance. The muted greens, grays and browns of the squat bushes and tall multi-armed Saguaro cacti contrasted with the brilliant greens and colorful flowers of the manicured Center grounds. He’d lived his entire life, almost thirty-two years, in Phoenix and had never seen a Saguaro cactus up close.

“Hello, Ryder.” Dr. Marguerite Hamilton looked much younger than her fifty-one years. Her flawless skin was deep brown, and her hair shone like polished ebony. When she’d first been hired as a scientist, her wardrobe had been nothing but old-lady flowered polyester. Now, as the Executive Vice President, she wore a dark gray tailored suit with matching shoes and a flashy scarf. She even had her nails done in a shade of red that matched her lipstick. “You’re looking well.”

The guard stepped out and closed the door, leaving Ryder and Hamilton alone.

“What’s Katie Marsh doing here?”