Darwin's Children

EPILOGUE ^{SHEVA2 + 1}

LONE PINE, CALIFORNIA

Kaye tried to move her lips. Such wonderful thoughts. So simple, so clear. If she could only speak to her husband.

Mitch looked at the lamp on the table, brows knit; he could hear his wife’s steady breath and the hum of the medical monitor and little more. When her breath changed its rhythm, he slowly turned his head and saw her lips move. He leaned forward, wondering if she was coming back, but her eyes stared out into space and blinked only once while he watched.

Still, the lips moved. That hurt. Any expectations were painful. Kaye’s periods of paralysis had been coming with greater frequency. He leaned forward, hoping with childish hope to see his wife, his woman, return to him, beginning with that small motion. He brought his ear down to her lips and felt the breath against the little hairs on the skin of his lobe. Kaye’s breath puffed, worked, to shape a few words.

Mitch could not be sure what he heard, if he heard anything at all. He pulled back to look at Kaye’s face and realized she was trying with superhuman effort to communicate something she thought was important. The slightest coming together of her brows, stiffening of her cheeks, set of her eyelids, reminded him of earnest conversations years past, when she struggled to convey something not quite within her grasp or authority. That had been his Kaye, always reaching beyond what words could do.

He placed his ear close, almost blocking her lips. He fancied he heard, for a moment, his name, and then,

“Something’s… going on.”

He listened again.

“Something’s… happening.”

Then she lay still. Breath lifted the sheets but her eyes were still. Her face was blank.

She seemed to be listening.

She felt the love rolling over her in waves, the yearning that was at once so powerful and frightening, the sweetness that lay behind the power. Her death would not come yet, not this minute, not this hour, this she knew, but she was no longer much of this world.

And so she could be embraced and told all.

No fear of addiction now.

Stella brought the baby and sat with them. She wore simple clothes and held the boy in a loose knit wrap, because, she said, he was such a warm-blooded creature, he hardly ever got chilly and fussed if he was covered.

“We’ve chosen a talking name,” Stella said. Then, looking at her mother, she asked Mitch if Kaye could hear them.

“I don’t know,” Mitch said. His face was so lost. Stella let him hold his grandson and adjusted her mother’s covers.

“Nothing’s fair, is it?” she asked Kaye softly, leaning over, her cheeks golden. “She looks peaceful. I think she can hear us.”

Mitch watched Kaye breathe in and out, slowly, simply.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“We’re going to call him Sam,” Stella said. “I can’t think of anything better. The deme thinks it’s good.”

Sam was Mitch’s father’s name. “Not Samuel?”

“Just Sam. He likes the name already. It’s strong and short and doesn’t interfere with saying other things.”

Sam squirmed and wanted to get down. At six months, he was already walking a little, and speaking, of course; but only when he wanted to, which was seldom.

Mitch tried to find a little of Kaye in Sam’s features, but there was too much eyebrow. Sam looked too much like Mitch.

“He looks like Will, I think,” Stella said. She touched her mother’s cheek, gripped her hand. “She has a scent. It’s her, but different. I’m not sure I’d recognize her. Can you smell it?”

Mitch shook his head. “Maybe she smells ill,” he said darkly.

“No.” Stella bowed to sniff her mother from breast to crown. “She smells like smoke from a wood fire, and flowers. We need her to teach us. Mother, you could teach me so much.”

Sam walked around the bed, gripping the covers and making sounds of discovery.

Kaye’s face did not change expression, but Stella saw the tiny freckles darken under her mother’s eyes. Even now, Kaye could show her love.

The memories fall away. We are shaped, but in ways we do not understand. Know that thinking and memory are biology, and biology is what we leave behind. The caller speaks to all of our minds, and they all pray; to all of our minds, from the lowest to the highest, in nature, the caller assures us that there is more, and that is all the caller can do. It is important that each mind be created with absolute freedom of will. That freedom is precious; it enriches and quickens that which the caller loves.

Mind and memory make up the precious rind of the even more precious fruit.

We are sculpted as the embryo is made; we die and cells die that others may take a shape; the shape grows and changes, visible only to the caller; ultimately all must be chipped away, having made their contributions.

The memories fall away. We are shaped. There is no judgment, for in life there is no perfection, only freedom. To succeed or to fail is all the same—it is to be loved.

To die, to fall silent, is not to be forgotten or lost.

Silence is the beacon of past love and painful labor.

Silence is also a signal.

Mitch sat by Kaye as the doctors and nurses came and went. He watched her grow more at ease, if that was possible, while breath still came and heart still beat with a slow, pattering softness.

He finished that night, before he napped off, by kissing her forehead and saying, “Good night, Eve.”

Mitch slept in the chair. Quiet filled the room.

The world seemed empty and new.

Silence filled Kaye.

In a dream, Mitch walked over the high rocky mountains, and met a woman on the snows.