Double Helix Ch. 07

Tilly sat fidgeting behind the terminal. Her hands rested on the keyboard, but she pulled them off again. "You're sure it's her?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "She knows you. She sent me design notes for your gene model. Look, she just signed in."

On the screen was a blinking cursor and the word "Hello" next to Kelly's chat room ID.

Tilly put her hands on the keys again and began to type. "Hey. It's me, Tilly."

"Tilly, honey, I've been so worried about you. I'm so glad you're safe. How are you doing?"

Tilly's fingers hovered over the keyboard for a few moments before she started typing. "I'm still having trouble believing it's really over. Did Norm tell you what happened?"

"Yes, though not all of it, I think. Is he there?"

Tilly smiled wryly to herself. "Yes, he's looking over my shoulder, and he says 'hi'. I'll tell you more about it when I can, but not right now. So, how are you? What have you been doing?"

"I'm okay, under the circumstances. I'm doing government work, and it really sucks. They're having me evaluate and catalog genetic research documents. Believe me, it could be worse. I've heard stories of some of the things being worked on by my former colleagues. Not all of them are true, I'm sure."

"We have a lot to catch up on," Tilly typed. "I've missed you, mom."

"Look, the only time they give me any privacy is when I go to the bathroom. I've got about five more minutes before someone comes looking for me. Ask me anything you want."

I let the two of them have their privacy to converse. Wendy and Nissi were sitting together on the sofa, and Wendy moved over to make room for me. Once things had settled, one of the first things that Tilly had asked is if she could speak to her mother. She knew that I had been in contact with her from listening in to my conversation with Wendy. It had taken two days to arrange the meeting, but Kelly had been ecstatic in her messages to me.

Tilly came to find me after she was finished. "Thank you, Norm," she said. "I still can't believe you were able to contact her."

The movie that was running on the TV suddenly winked off, replaced a moment later by a view of an empty podium with the seal of the president on the front of it. A voice over announced, "We interrupt this program for a special announcement from the president of the United States."

Stansy came running in from her bedroom to stand behind the couch. President John McCain approached the a podium, flanked by secret service agents and trailed by aides and various officials. He was all business, sparing only a brief smile and nod to members of the audience. He placed a small stack of papers on the podium and unfolded a pair of reading glasses from a breast pocket, then began to speak. "Good evening, my fellow Americans. It is with a heavy heart that I stand before you tonight. Today marks nine years since the Rot was first unleashed upon our world. It has been more than seven years since this administration passed a resolution to ban the genetic engineering that spawned that horrible plague.

"In that time, we have done everything we can to reverse the often horrifying effects of the runaway genetic tampering of the previous half century. We, the American people, have worked to mitigate the damage, not just to our food supply, but to our very way of life. We have extended our welcome to the victims of genetic engineering to bring them back into the fold of humanity, and up to this point have given them every opportunity to do so. Many have accepted that offer and been made whole. Others have rejected it. In so doing, they have rejected their humanity and declared war on all of us. This, we can abide no longer. As president and by the authority of the Emergency Executive Powers Act, I hereby declare that all genetically modified humans currently at large are guilty of treason against the United States."

He paused, and a smattering of applause went up, but quickly died down as he surveyed the audience soberly. "It is a decision I did not come to lightly, and not without regret. However, as a gesture of goodwill and of mercy, any genemod who willingly surrenders to the custody of local or federal law enforcement within the next six months will receive a full pardon for his or her crimes, contingent upon undergoing voluntary reversion of genetic modification. After that grace period, the full force of the law will be brought to bear. Consummate with that order, individuals found to be guilty of aiding and abetting genemods will receive stiff penalties for their actions, up to and including capital punishment. We will search door-to-door if we have to, until each of them is found and brought to justice.

"Once more, I do regret that we have come to this point, but the way forward is clear. The human race cannot survive another Rot. It is time to bring this unhappy chapter of our history to a close. It is time to take a stand against those who would bring humanity to its knees, those who would try to usurp our rightful place as masters of this Earth. Thank you."

The shot switched to a wide-angle view of the audience standing and applauding as Mr. McCain turned and walked from the stage. The secretary of state came forward to field questions from the press.

"Holy shit!" Nissi rasped, getting to her feet. She turned to me. "Norm, did you catch that?"

"Escalation," I said, remembering Sasha's words from weeks earlier.

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Never mind."

"We are well and truly fucked," Nock said.

Stansy just covered her face for a moment and walked away, muttering curses.

I saw that Tilly had gotten up and wandered over at some point in the speech. She was staring silently at the screen.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she said. She looked for a few moments more and seemed to shake herself out of whatever she had been thinking. "Stan, how are we doing on the user authentication code?"

She and Stan went back over to the terminal and got to work, and Stan looked happy for the diversion. I looked at Nock, who seemed intent on avoiding my gaze. He flipped through the channels until he found one where they weren't talking about the announcement.

I could understand a little of what they were going through. In an instant, our fortunes had flipped. I still faced a long prison sentence for my crimes. The genemods faced execution. They would remain alive only as long as they could remain hidden.

Nissi sat back down and leaned heavily against me. "It just gets worse all the time," she said. "Why can't they just leave us alone?"

I stroked the back of her head. "I don't know." I thought to say something more, about how things would have to get better eventually, but the words rang hollow in my mind. What hope was there for any of them but to escape the madness that had taken hold of the country?

When the movie ended, Nissi took my hand. "Come on," she said, and led me back to her room. She put on a record and Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" began to play from her speakers. Flashing me a smile he took my hand in hers and put other her arm around me, and we danced in the tiny space. I found her pressing her body closer against me and she rested her head on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and breathed her in. "I love you," I said.

Her arms tightened on me reflexively. I felt and heard her take a deep breath, but it hitched in her throat. She whimpered and shook, but wouldn't let me pull away when I became alarmed. Only then did I realize that she was crying. "It's okay," I whispered in her ear, still rocking slowly to the music. I had never seen her cry before, and I got the sense that she wasn't used to it either. The song ended quickly and moved on to the next, but we danced on until Nissi's sniffles had stopped and the tension had left her body.

Nissi finally pulled away from me, turning her back to me as she did. She began to strip, so I did the same, until we were both standing in our underwear. When she turned back to me, she looked like a mess, with her makeup smudged and her eyes red and puffy. She closed the distance between us and kissed me fiercely. When it was over, she pressed her forehead against mine. "It frightens me," she said in a hoarse voice.

"I know it does," I said, thinking that she meant the new presidential order. "I'm scared too.

"No," she said. "It frightens me how much I need you. If something ever happened to you, Norm, I don't know how I could go on." She sighed. "Every time something like this happens, it rips away the illusion that things are normal and all the fear and pain come rushing back. I wanted to bring you in here and fuck you silly, just to forget for a while, but I can't even do that right. Look at me, crying like some simpering little girl."

"It's okay," I said. "I'm not even sure I could get it up right now."

She smiled slightly in amusement. "That almost sounds like a challenge, but really, I think I just want to cuddle."

We got into bed together and Nissi fitted her body against mine, though she couldn't resist a quick grind against my crotch before settling down. I ran my fingers through her hair and planted soft kisses on her bare neck and shoulder. She sighed her contentment. "I love you," she mumbled. Less than a minute later, I felt and heard her slip into sleep. I waited for a bit longer to make sure she was truly out before slipping away to get dressed.

I found my door open and light streaming out into the hallway. "Tilly?" I said, finding her seated on my bed with her hands in her lap. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Hi, sorry. I thought you might be coming back to sleep in your own room, and I wanted to have a word."

I started to close the door, but something about the intimacy of having Tilly in my room bothered me, and I stopped.

"In private, if you don't mind." she said.

I closed the door the rest of the way and stepped toward the bed but stopped. My thoughts flashed suddenly and inexplicably back to that kiss, when she had first awakened following her treatment. A not-unpleasant chill went through me at the memory, but I pushed it from my mind. I held my distance, awkward though it felt, halfway between the door and the bed. "What's on your mind?"

"This latest order," she said, lowering her voice. "The agency's efforts have been a profound embarrassment for the McCain administration. It's no coincidence that this comes after we've been having all of these disruptions in our food supply. Don't you see? They want to make us turn on each other. I'm sure that a lot of safe houses are doing a lot worse than we are right now. Some--maybe even most--genemods are willing to die to remain who they are, but not all of them, I would bet. Defections are going to start happening, and the closer we get to the six-month deadline, the worse it's going to get."

The thought hadn't occurred to me, but it made perfect sense. That bit about searching door-to-door might have been hyperbole, or it might have been a carefully crafted statement to get the American people ready for it. In either case, the threat alone might be enough to get the effect they wanted. "So what do we do about it?"

Tilly took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I really don't know what to do about the big picture, but we need to think about our own home at least. People look up to you, Norm. You see things differently than most people. Look what an effect you've had on our lives here."

I shrugged and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I built a bathroom."

"No. You gave us hope. You've given all of us something to do and to look forward to. Stansy has been talking to her son. Wendy feels appreciated in a way she's never felt before. Stan felt useless before he started on this VPN project. You know, Nissi told me that it was your interest in her music that got her to fall in love with you? Even Nock has lost some of his cynicism. All of that is your doing. You and I are alike in that way."

"I can't take credit for Stan," I said dismissively.

"You inspired him. Trust me on this. And then there's me." She stood and came close, taking my hand. "Can you ever really know what you've done for me?"

Her touch sent an electric thrill through me. I longed to pull her in, the press my body against hers until we joined together. Warmth gathered and pooled in the pit of my stomach, an awakening desire. I reacted without thinking, jerking my hand away.

Tilly withdrew half a step, a question in her gaze. I hated myself for feeling such things, and for inspiring the hurt and confusion reflected back to me in her eyes. I dreaded what she would say to me next, whether question or accusation, but all she said was, "Please, just think about it. We need to keep morale high if we're going to get through this."

"Okay," I said, flashing her a smile I didn't feel. "I'll see what I can do to keep everyone's spirits up. Right now, I'd like to go to sleep. I'll talk to Sasha about your other concern in the morning"

"Yes, I should go," Tilly said, sounding nearly as awkward as I felt.

As the weeks went by, some things got better, others got worse. Stansy had begun exchanging emails with her son on a daily basis now, and though things were still rocky, she seemed to think that he was coming around to her view of things. Stan was absorbed in his work, spending long hours each day building the protocols of his network with frequent input from Tilly. Nock was the same as ever, except that he seemed a lot less prickly and cynical, which I could only attribute to Tilly's influence. Nissi and I were still very much in love.

Our biggest problem was food. In a month's time, the agency managed to get us just two of its normally weekly shipments as suppliers dried up in the wake of McCain's order. Sasha stretched what we had and made up some of the difference through local black market dealers, but she confided in me that each of us was only getting about 1200 calories a day. I started tracking my weight and realized that I was losing almost two pounds a week. Some of that was probably healthy, but if it went on for a few more months, I was going to be under weight. I asked for and was granted an additional shift at the hospital, but it seemed to make little difference in the amount that Sasha was able to purchase. After more than two months of waiting, my FEMA food ration request was still pending.

Beyond that, Tilly continued to surprise and confuse me. She had long and frequent conversations with everyone, but her interactions with me were always polite but brief. Most vexing of all was that when I really thought about it, I was actually glad not to be spending time alone with her. I still didn't know what to think of Tilly, or of my reaction to her.

One morning, when I went to get Wendy for our T'ai Chi session, I found her sitting on her bed crying. Her cat, Ingrid, was in her lap, purring loudly as she stroked her fur.

"Hi," I said. "Are you okay?"

"No," she said hoarsely, "I'm not, but it's stupid."

"Try me," I said.

Ingrid chose that moment to flip over onto her back to give Wendy access to scratch her belly. "I have to give her up, Norm. Sasha told me yesterday, but it didn't really hit me until now. We can't afford to feed Ingrid anymore."

"Is it really that bad?" I asked.

Wendy sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across each eye. "She only eats about 200 calories a day, but the scraps that Sasha would normally save out for her, she's having to use in our food. She only let me keep Ingrid this long because I eat less than anyone else, so the difference went to her."

"What's going to happen to her?"

"Sasha said she would take her to the animal shelter for me. Maybe they will find her a new home."

I knew that was unlikely. The cost of pet food had gone up along precipitously since the Rot had spread. Household pets were a lot less common than they used to be. Most pets who went to a shelter were euthanized within a few weeks.

"I'll talk to her," I said.

"No," Wendy said, looking down to scratch her cat under the chin. "I appreciate it, Norm, but please don't. Things are bad and might not get better for some time. It's the right thing to do for us. Ingrid's had a good life. It's just hard saying goodbye."

"Okay," I said, "but please let me know if you change your mind." I gave her shoulder a squeeze and let myself out, our T'ai Chi practice forgotten.

Tilly surprised me when she sat down across from me at breakfast. "Can I go work in the greenhouse with you today?"

I looked up from my bowl of oatmeal. She had an earnest look, and I found myself nodding before I could really think it through. "Sure. You can help me plant a new crop of lettuce."

I looked over at Nissi, but she was talking with Wendy, further down the table. My gaze returned to Tilly, who was studying me intently. I had the overwhelming urge to reach across the table to touch her face. I felt a flush creep up my neck and I looked quickly away. What was wrong with me?

I quickly finished my meager breakfast and excused myself from the table to wash my dishes. I hadn't felt this sort of attraction in all those weeks that I had been treating Tilly. Back then, she had been merely my patient, and a very damaged one at that. Now, my stomach churned with so much dread and anticipation that it was a wonder I could keep my food down.

I got dressed to go out and toyed with the idea of telling her she couldn't come with me today. "You're being silly," I chided myself. Besides, what would I tell her? That I was hopelessly attracted to her and needed to keep my distance so I wouldn't hurt Nissi? What did that say about me?

"All set?" Tilly said brightly as I emerged. Her look told me that I had been gone for far longer than I should have for just putting on jeans and shoes.

I acknowledged her with a fake smile and followed her up the stairs. I went through the greenhouse' airlock first and on to get the seed lettuce to start work immediately. I reasoned that we should just get the task done quickly and get out. Though the work was not difficult, we had several plants to go through, and I had barely harvested all of the seeds from the first plant before Tilly came to join me.

"We need to talk," she said, squatting next to me. She began to pull at the little white puffs, like tiny dandelion seed clusters, placing them in the bowl that I had gotten out for this purpose.

"Okay," I said, and felt my guilt and trepidation cinch tighter in my gut. "What about?"

"I've been thinking a lot about the announcement that the president made a few weeks ago," she said.

"Ah," I said, and took a relieved breath. "You're worried about it?"

"Yes," she said hesitantly and paused. I resisted the urge to turn and look at her. "But more than that, I'm worried about what I'm sensing from Stansy."

I stopped picking seeds to look at her, my own petty insecurities completely forgotten. "What about Stansy?"

Tilly sighed. "Well, everyone else reacts with fear and apprehension any time it shows up on the news or in conversation, but more and more, lately, I'm getting something else from Stansy. I'm not sure how to describe it, except that she becomes introspective. I don't really want to start problems with her, but--"

"But you're worried that she's considering turning herself in," I finished for her, picking up her line of thought.

"Maybe," she said, frowning. "How did you know?"

I nodded. "The thought has crossed my mind. You've heard of the Criminals' Dilemma?"

"Of course."

"They want us to turn on each other," I said. "It's going to start happening, if it hasn't already, though I expect most people will want to wait it out until we're a bit closer to the deadline. Genemods are going to start giving themselves up, and taking everyone else in their safe houses with them. How sure are you about this?"