Rebirth Part 14

"What about me?" Cass asked. "And David?"

"You're an outlier," Lester said, with a trace of envy that he didn't bother to mask. "That's way different."

"I'll have an assignment for you soon, but it's only temporary," Pace said crisply, giving Lester a disapproving glance. "For one thing, you'll be spending a lot of time in research. As for David, he'll be considered for an assignment from the regular population pool. That may change when you move to permanent outlier quarters. But no moves will be feasible until spring, at the earliest. There's a great deal to do. Now, let's get everyone moving. There's a new group that should be here any minute."

As he and Kaufman talked in low voices about how best to move Malena, Lester touched Cass's arm, his expression wistful.

"Those outlier quarters? When they get them done, it'll be the closest thing anyone's going to come to Before ever again."

25.

DOR WAS WAITING WHEN LESTER ESCORTED CASS and Ruthie to their room in the temporary quarters reserved for those waiting on their permanent assignments, a nearly empty floor of an unremarkable brick dormitory. The door of their room was propped open and he was sitting on the edge of one of two narrow beds, his jaw set in a hard line. He jumped to his feet and stood glowering, large hands hanging at his sides.

"Where have you been?"

"What are you doing here?" Cass couldn't help staring at his crotch, which looked like it had the last time she'd seen him-if he'd had a vasectomy, he'd also had a remarkable recovery. He was wearing the same jeans he had on yesterday and a shirt she didn't recognize. He'd shaved, but it wasn't the precise, close shave he preferred, and she supposed no one had returned his pack to him yet. Dor's one indulgence was his razor, which he paid the Box barber to sharpen twice a week. Entrepreneurs themselves, raiding parties often brought shaving cream or new straight blades to barter with Dor.

"I've already been snipped," he growled, "like I told you all before. We could have saved a little time if you'd listened to me." He directed this at Lester, who shrugged and turned to go, hand on the door frame.

"Just following orders. Besides, it's not like you had to go through hell to prove it. See you around."

His steps echoed down the hall. They were on the second floor of a boxy brick dorm. It was eerily quiet; Cass supposed most people were working at whatever jobs they'd been assigned.

"How did you prove it?" Cass kept her voice casual, unwilling to let out any of her emotions, especially not the embarrassment and shame that came to the surface the minute she saw him.

Dor shrugged. "Jacked off into a Dixie cup. With a copy of Penthouse from 2012. You'd think they'd be able to find a few copies from last year, given all the raiding they do."

Cass felt her blush deepen, but she was determined to keep things light between them. "Who was on the cover?"

"I didn't notice. I just looked at her tits."

"Ha." Cass didn't believe him. Something in her wanted to think he probably didn't look at anything at all, that he closed his eyes, that his mind was somewhere far away and unknowable to anyone but him.

And if she imagined for a fraction of a second that it was her he saw when he closed his eyes, then she was the biggest idiot of all, pathetic Cassandra Dollar, wondering, as she had a thousand mornings after, if the man she brought home was thinking of her as he drove back to his own house or apartment or trailer or wife, wearing the clothes he'd had on in the bar or party or parking lot or wherever they'd met. No man ever did, of course, she knew that now. They thought only of making a clean getaway, of washing all traces of her down the drain.

But Dor couldn't get away. Dor was stuck with her. Well, they were both adults-they would just have to find a way to deal with it.

"How did they know...you know?" Cass asked, aiming for nonchalance. "I mean, are you really, um..."

"Shooting blanks? Yeah, I had a vasectomy after Sammi. I think they just put some on a slide and check it out under the microscope. Hell, you could probably do it with one of those cheap scopes they use in middle school. The little fuckers are swimming around in there or they aren't, you know?"

Cass wrinkled her nose. "Um."

"Look, Cass, long as we're on the subject..." His brief attempt at levity, rare enough for Dor on the best of days, was clearly over. He turned away from her, made a show of lining up the items on one of the two student desks-a pen, a pad of paper, a plastic cup-in perfect symmetry. "Just in case you're wondering, I have no issues." He cleared his throat. "Health issues."

For a moment Cass didn't understand-and then she did. There had been a recent outbreak of crabs in the Box; one of the most popular items being traded lately was RID shampoo. There had also been a couple of HIV-positive people in the box-once-hardy people who, deprived of their medication, were now getting sicker and sicker. Safe sex, once as easy as a trip to the drugstore, was a lost luxury-though most people were willing to take the chance, given the life expectancy Aftertime. Smoke had told Cass one day, shaking his head in amazement, that in the comfort tents sex with a condom brought the seller almost no premium over sex without-no one believed they'd live long enough to suffer the consequences. As one old-timer put it, a phrase he repeated every time he scraped up enough to afford a night's entertainment, "I'd rather die with a smile on my face and a withered dick than with all my parts working and nowhere to use them."

"Oh," Cass said in a small voice. She focused on Ruthie, who had slipped over to Dor's side and was looking longingly at the neat row of objects. Cass knew Ruthie had her eye on the pen and paper, her favorite entertainment in all the world.

"And you? You...and Smoke-everything...healthy?"

Anger rose like sap in Cass's veins. None of your business, she wanted to say. The last time she and Smoke had made love, the morning before he betrayed her, she lay in his arms afterward-foolishly, obliviously-thinking that they would never be separated in this lifetime. That he was the last lover she would ever have.

But she'd been wrong, and now it was Dor's business. Because she had made it his business.

This is wrong, he'd said.

I don't want you.

But she had forced him.

And then last night he had punished her, and she'd fought him for it, demanding more.

She hung her head. "Yes. I, uh...before Smoke, before everything, I had a checkup, must have been a year and a half ago. Clean bill of health."

"You haven't-?" Dor said in surprise, then stopped abruptly, holding up a conciliatory hand. "I'm sorry. Not my business."

Cass knew the source of his surprise-that she hadn't been with anyone besides Smoke. She supposed she'd earned it. You didn't sleep with two-hundred-plus men between the age of sixteen and twenty-eight-stopping only because you had a baby, because you believed God had given you one last chance by entrusting you with another life-without earning some sort of taint, some sort of permanent patina of promiscuity. When Cass had returned to A.A. for the second time, after her disastrous relapse, she took to dressing like a matron for a while, desperate to obliterate her past. She had been convinced that there had to be something she could put on-the rosewater cologne that reminded her of her grandmother, an unflattering skirt that hit her midcalf, a hair band that made her look like a soccer mom-that would disguise her. But no. The men still looked at her the way they looked at her. And Smoke had told her a hundred times that she was sexy, that she was hot, even now when she dressed only for survival. He whispered it when he came up on her watering her seedlings or rubbing dust off her ankles with the towel they kept by the front of the tent. But Cass knew what he was really saying: that she was marked, that she could never shake it, never make it go away. She could never know if he really saw her, the real her, past this other, the mark.

But this was Aftertime. She couldn't let her lifelong shame, her old scars, stop her from doing what needed to be done. So she faced Dor squarely, forced herself to look into his flinty eyes. "I haven't been with anyone besides Smoke for almost two years," she said. In fact, it would have been since the moment she discovered she was pregnant, the moment everything changed, except for her one relapse, when she'd traded thirty-one months of sobriety for the bender that got Ruthie taken away from her by the people from Children and Family Services.

"All right then." Dor gave the cup a final nudge and then, without comment, picked Ruthie up and settled her into the desk chair, smoothing down one of her shirtsleeves that had gotten twisted around her arm. He slid the pen and notebook into her reach. "We've got an hour before someone's coming by. I'm going to lie down. I didn't sleep much last night."

He stretched his long, lanky form out on the bed closest to the windows, crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. Cass watched him with envy. He seemed to be able to turn off all the thoughts churning in his head, to make himself oblivious to everything around him. Obviously he preferred solitude-his self-imposed exile in his trailer was evidence of that-but he fell asleep almost immediately, as though he was alone in comfortable and familiar surroundings.

"Are you doing okay, sweetie?" she whispered to Ruthie, crouching down to look at the picture she was making. Like all her drawings, it was a series of scribbles, roughly round bubbles crosshatched with bold swipes of the pen. The day would probably come when Ruthie could draw a recognizable figure, but it was far-off. Still, she concentrated with the focus of a draftsman doing painstaking precise work and her every mark was deliberate.

Deliberate-it was the perfect word to describe Ruthie, or more precisely, to describe the little girl she had become since her time in the Convent. Cautious, careful, painstaking. Cass missed the old carefree Ruthie so much it hurt-missed her laughter, missed the way she ran shrieking when they played tag, missed the way she collapsed into giggles during tickle fights.

Ruthie looked up from her drawing and smiled. That would have to be enough.

"Okay, then Mommy's going to try to take a little nap, too. All right? I'm going to close the door, and I don't want you to open it. Not for anyone. If someone comes, if someone knocks, I want you to wake me right up. Understand? Me or Dor."

Despite her doubts about her ability to sleep, when Cass lay down she felt anxiety lessen a little. She was exhausted, and the mattress was soft and surprisingly comfortable, and the sun through the windows warmed the room. She began to drift, and the feeling was unexpectedly pleasant. Soon visions of her garden back in the Box swirled through her mind, the gaillardia plants sprouting buds and the ivy sending out pretty twining trailers. She dreamed of her garden until a sound interrupted her dream and she sat bolt up and discovered that she and Dor were alone, that the sun had crept higher in the sky and Ruthie had disappeared.

Cass rolled off the bed and hit the floor unsteadily, her legs heavy with sleep, her breath caught in her lungs. She steadied herself by clutching the bed frame and propelled herself toward the door with a surge of energy fueled by terror. Not again.

Not again.

Her panic lessened only slightly when she ran into the hall and saw a doughy woman with unusually careful posture walking slowly down the corridor toward the stairs, carrying Ruthie. When Ruthie saw Cass, she began to struggle.

"Mama!"

It was the loudest sound Ruthie had ever made. Cass ran down the hallway as the woman rocked Ruthie in a lazy slow dance as though she wasn't screaming, wasn't struggling. By the time Cass reached the pair, the woman clutched Ruthie more tightly in her arms, locking them around her small back so she was trapped. Ruthie pushed against the woman's body as hard as she could, her pale skin damp and red with exertion.

"It's all right, baby," Cass said shakily, stopping short in case the woman had anything even crazier planned. "It's all right. Listen, she's frightened. If you could just set her down-"

"She's fine," the woman retorted, a little testily. "I have nieces, two of them. I know my way around kids."

Was the woman as deranged as Malena? Cass turned over options wildly in her mind: make a grab for Ruthie, wrestle her away, run. But she saw that the woman had a blade at her belt, and Cass was unarmed. She would have to reason with her.

"Such a nice little girl," the woman crooned, swaying back and forth. She was a dark-haired woman of medium height, slightly overweight, with her hair cut short and large eyeglasses with frames that overpowered her face. She was wearing a plaid skirt and plain, black high-heeled pumps, an unusual outfit in these times when everyone dressed for practicality. "Such a good girl. Being so good for Auntie Mary."

Mary-Mary Vane? Could it be? Cass edged slowly closer.

"She's heavy," she said, willing her voice to be calm. "Ever since she turned three, I can barely lift her myself. Here, let me help you."

"Well...all right. We can have another playdate later, can't we, little Ruthie?" the woman said, setting Ruthie down on the floor and wincing when she straightened again, rubbing the small of her back. Ruthie rushed into Cass's arms and Cass lifted her and felt the tension leave her small body, absorbed her relief as she went limp.

"She's just so lovely," Mary said, as though nothing were amiss. "There's nothing in the world like a child to give you hope, is there?"

Cass gaped at Mary. Despite her beatific smile, the effect fell far short of kindliness. She had the crafty look of someone with an unspoken agenda.

"I didn't mean to worry you," Mary added. "You and David looked like you needed your rest, and Ruthie didn't seem to mind when I picked her up, so we were just walking up and down the hall together. I'm Mary Vane, of course," she added, offering her hand for Cass to shake.

Dor stumbled into the hall, rubbing his hair with one hand. "Everything okay?"

"Certainly. Why wouldn't it be?" Mary turned her wide smile on him. A tenuous grasp on reality, a zealot's single-mindedness: these words came to mind. She wasn't so different from Evangeline-but in her way, she was more frightening. Evangeline's anger made her predictable; you knew she would seize every opportunity for cruelties small and large. But Mary's changeable veneer could be concealing anything.

The mask Dor had assumed last night with Kaufman slipped back in place. "Nice joint you're running here."

"Thank you. I'm here with good news. What are the odds," Mary said, drawing out her words, savoring them. "Your daughter-and Cass-both outliers. It's statistically so unlikely as to be-well, not impossible, of course. Very little is impossible in nature, a fact that my colleagues are prone to forget, to their peril. To all of our peril. One has only to look at the centuries of human history that brought us to this juncture to arrive at that realization. But people don't often learn from history, do they?"

The look on Mary's face was calculating and intelligent, crafty and more than a little manic. Dor stepped subtly closer, putting his body between the two women.

"They told me Ruthie had a...strong reaction to the tests," she continued. "I'm devastated, just utterly devastated, to think that we caused her any anxiety. But of course I wanted to see her for myself. She's our youngest yet, you know-our youngest outlier." She looked at Ruthie with something like hunger, and Cass edged closer to Dor, holding Ruthie tightly.

Mary's gaze traveled over Cass: her face, her arms, lingering on the faint traces of the scars left over from bite wounds along her forearms. Cass felt her skin prickle and tingle under Mary's scrutiny.

"Evangeline told me something very interesting," she continued. "She says you were attacked by Beaters. Last summer. That you actually survived. I can't tell you what this means, to our research, to our development program...."

Cass sucked in her breath. There was only one way Evangeline could have found out-by bribing or torturing the information from Cass's only friend at the library. Elaine had helped her, had promised to keep her secrets. But how long would she have been able to keep them once Evangeline started pressuring her to tell?

Mary reached out a thin and bony hand, the nails chewed to red-rimmed scabs, and touched Cass's skin so gently that the hairs tickled. It was all she could do not to jerk her arm away as she told a partial truth. "I don't remember what happened to me."

"Mmmm," Mary hummed, and her hand slowly closed around Cass's arm, tightening her grip until her knuckles went white. She lifted Cass's wrist and stared at the pale soft underside, her nostrils flaring as though she was trying to smell the flesh. Then, abruptly, she released her and turned to Dor.

"I understand you were asking about the medical facility, David."

Dor's only reaction was a slight twitch of one eyebrow.

"Were you employed in a medical field, before? A physician perhaps?"

"No, sorry. I...sold computers, though. Had a few hospitals for clients."

"Oh, I see. Well, as you might imagine, we do not have a great need for technical computer workers. Construction, yes. I don't suppose you know masonry? Glazing?"

Dor shrugged. "I'm handy. I'm sure I can learn."

"Mmmm." She gave him a long look before turning her attention to Cass. "You, on the other hand, will be spending lots of time in the Tapp Clinic."

Cass kept her expression neutral. "Whatever I can do to help."

"That's what we like to hear." Mary's smile widened. "Tell you what. How about you and I take a quick trip over there right now-just us girls. We can leave Ruthie here with her daddy, get you back in time for dinner. I'd love to show you around the facility myself-I hope you'll forgive me a little bragging, but I'm just so darn proud of what we've accomplished so far."

"We've already seen some of it, when we had the blood test yesterday."

"Oh." Was it Cass's imagination, or did Mary's smile slip a little? "Okay. Yes. The blood test. It's too bad that..." She sighed, and for a second she looked petulant, like a spoiled child denied an audience. "They didn't show you the operating arena yet, did they? The patient rooms?"

"Uh...no..."

"Good! Because I want to show you those myself." Mary's good humor was instantly restored. "It was my idea, you know, using that building for the clinic. I modeled it after some of the World War I hospitals. It was really amazing, you'd have soldiers laid out in hotel lobbies and-oh, but we can talk about it on the way."

"Sure...great."

Cass avoided Mary's eyes. She was picking up on things she didn't like, things that set off her internal alarms. Cass, who had learned to read her mother's expressions and her stepfather's moods as a survival skill, who had listened to a hundred tortured souls baring their deepest secrets in church basements, was far more sensitive than most people to the subtleties of human exchanges. She was picking up something disturbing about Mary, a need for attention bordering on narcissism, a near-manic changeability of her energy. Occasionally, there was someone like this in a meeting, though they never lasted long. Their need for attention was never sated in the anonymous gatherings, which focused on the steps rather than the individuals.

She gave Ruthie a quick kiss and-since Mary was watching-kissed Dor, as well. Her lips brushed his cheek, warm and rough with stubble. The kiss caught him off guard; she had already moved away from him when he caught her arm and pulled her back.

For a moment she thought he was going to chastise her, question her-but instead he kissed her again, a real kiss, his mouth hot on hers, claiming her, tasting her. Before she could think she was kissing him back, a rush of sensation and need that ended too quickly when he broke from her and murmured against her ear. "Be careful," he whispered, and then he released her.

Cass put her hand to her mouth, breathless. It had been a physical response-nothing more; synapses conditioned to fire in response to stimuli, and yet as they left the room Cass couldn't help turning to watch the man she barely knew cradling her daughter and staring at her with an expression as indecipherable as it was intense.

26.

THIS TIME, THERE WAS NO ONE LYING ON THE table in the operating room. There was no one there at all, except for a young ponytailed man who was setting out instruments in neat rows on a table.

"We use kaysev-based alcohol to sterilize our instruments," Mary said conversationally. Any traces of her earlier moodiness, of the manic scrutiny, had disappeared when they began the tour. Mary pointed out each feature of the clinic as though she alone had been responsible for creating it. "And we use it as an antiseptic, too. It's remarkably effective. We have a whole team looking into new ways of preparing and using kaysev. They're working next door-know what I named that building?"

"Um, no..."

"The Carver Lab, after George Washington Carver. You know, the peanut guy? He invented more than a hundred different products-all from peanuts."

Chapter end