Читать книгу Darwin’s Children - Greg Bear - Страница 33

Grief had been tracking Mitch Rafelson like a hunter. It had him in its eyebeams, painting him like a target, preparing to bring him down and settle in for a long feast.

He felt like stopping the Dodge on the side of the road, getting out, and running. As always, he stuffed these dark thoughts into a little drawer in the basement of his skull. Anything that demonstrated he was other than a loving father, all the emotions that had not been appropriate for eleven years and more, he hid away down there, along with the old dreams about the mummies in the Alps.

All the spooky little guesses about the situation of the long-dead Neandertals, mother and father, and the mummified, modern infant they had made before dying in the cold, in the long deep cave covered with ice.

Mitch no longer had such dreams. He hardly dreamed at all. But then, there wasn’t much else left of the old Mitch, either. He had been burned away, leaving a thin skeleton of steel and stone that was Stella’s daddy. He did not even know anymore whether his wife loved him. They hadn’t made love in months. They didn’t have time to think about such things. Neither complained; that was just the way it was, no energy or passion left after dealing with the stress and worry.

Mitch would have killed Fred Trinket if the police and the van hadn’t been there. He would have broken the man’s neck, then looked into the bastard’s startled eyes as he finished the twist. Mitch ran that image through his head until he felt his stomach jump.

He understood more than ever how the Neandertal papa must have felt.

Seven miles. They were on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. The road was surrounded by blaring ads trying to get him to buy cars, buy tract homes, spend money he did not have. The houses beyond the freeway were packed close, crowded and small, and the big brick industrial buildings were dirty and dark. He hardly noticed a tiny park with bright red swings and plastic picnic tables. He was looking for the right turnoff.

“There it is,” he told Kaye, and took the exit. He glanced into the backseat. Stella was limp. Kaye held her. Together like that, they reminded him of a statue, a Pietà. He hated that metaphor, common enough on the fringe sites on the Internet: the new children as martyrs, as Christ. Hated it with a passion. Martyrs died. Jesus had died horribly, persecuted by a blind state and an ignorant, bloodthirsty rabble, and that was certainly not going to happen to Stella.

Stella was going to live until long after Mitch Rafelson had rotted down to dry, interesting bones.

The safe house was in the rich suburbs. The tree-filled estates here were nothing like the land around the little frame house in Virginia. Smooth asphalt and concrete roads served big new houses from the last hot run of the economy. Here the streets were lined on both sides with fresh-cut stone walls set behind mature pines and broken only by black iron gates topped with spikes.

He found the number painted on the curb and pulled the Dodge up to a hooded security keypad. The first time, he fumbled the number and the keypad buzzed. A small red light blinked a warning. The second time, the gate rolled open smoothly. Leaves rustled in the maple trees overarching the driveway.

“Almost there,” he said.

“Hurry,” Kaye said quietly.