All the Colors of Time (11 page)

Puzzled, Sharon bent to her own work, but there is nothing
so insidious and pervasive as fear, and Sharon had begun to fear, because she
could think of no reason Trevor would fail to download the information on Alec,
unless . . .

And that was her imagination’s stopping point. Was Alec
destined to die a horrible death? Perhaps by assassination? What else could be
so terrible that Trev wouldn’t let anyone see it?

The thought gnawed. She countered with stern logic. When she’d
brought the matter up, his tone had been light and teasing. (Yes, even as his
eyes crawled away to hide and his ears reddened.) He’d said Alec was a
lobbyist—maybe his political career would be too unspectacular to warrant
downloading. (But he might have at least done it for her, even though it meant
bending the rules a bit.)

Stern logic was powerless. Not fifteen minutes had passed
before she got up from her console and headed down the hall toward Trevor’s
office. She would simply ask. Straight up. What did you find out about Alec?
Just a mother’s fond and proud curiosity. No hint of inner panic. No what aren’t
you telling me?

But Trevor wasn’t in his office. His console was on, his
chair pulled back as if he had just left it. The palm unit was still in the
docking slot. Sharon stood on the door sill, indecisively, aware of the
familiar buzz and wash of sound from the offices and labs—the murmur of
conversations in the hall.

She came into the room, the door swinging closed behind her.
It took only a moment to slip into his chair, access the palm unit and check
its contents. She found what she had been hoping not to find in a folder
separated from the main index and named simply “JG.” She contemplated
downloading it to her own console, but realized that in any case, Trevor would
know she’d seen the data if for no other reason than that she would confront
him with it.

She prepared herself for the worst; she could not have
prepared herself for the reality. Dr. Alec Glen, Ph.D., noted research
scientist, had indeed given up medicine to take up a political career and
crusade. He was the father of the Euthanasia Act of 2137, a piece of
legislation that put into the hands of doctors and judges and review boards the
decision as to when an individual should die. He was the first doctor to be
certified for euthanasia; the first to practice it.

Sharon stared at the monitor for an eternity before she was
able to will her hands to move, to dig further, to try to comprehend how her
son—her son!—could make himself the proponent of such a heinous law. No, not a
law, an atrocity by which elderly people unfortunate enough to require
institutionalization had their cases placed before a review board made up of
medical doctors, judges, psychologists, clergy and ethicists. Based on a complex
set of criteria, rules, conditions and formulas, a decision was made whether or
not to euthanize. There was even a list of terminal illnesses for which
euthanasia was the de facto “treatment” unless mitigating circumstances could
be proven.

Sharon’s tears blurred the names on the list—cold,
scientific names that said nothing of the suffering they inflicted: Myasthenia
gravis, multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s. Some were
conditions on which Alec would expend much time and effort during his medical
career. It was as if he were trying to literally bury his failure.

Numbly, Sharon followed another link. She found numbers,
statistics, a death roll. It numbered in the thousands.

Why?

“I was hoping you wouldn’t see that.” Trevor watched from
the doorway, face grave. Gravity was something he didn’t do well under normal
circumstances, but there was no hidden levity in his gaze now. “I guess I
should have destroyed it. But, um, it’s a development the analysts will want to
know about. Should know about.”

“You off-lined it.”

He reddened. “Like I said, I considered destroying it.”

“For me.”

He shrugged.

“How?” She shook her head.

“How does it happen or how does it happen to be Alec?”

“Both. Either.”

“People live longer, but in the end they still deteriorate.
People continue to have children. Population demographics indicate a glut of
elderly people, inflicted with certain diseases and too few facilities to care
for them. It apparently reached a crisis—will reach a crisis—in the mid ’30’s.”

“Fine—a crisis. But how does a humane society justify this?
How does a man with Alec’s background justify it? Here, it says he was
supported by the religious right. Back at the turn of this century, that same
lobby fought abortion, the death penalty and the right to die.”

“Ah, interesting, that.” He came into the room. “The new
sensibility will hold that since death is reunion with God, and therefore not
to be feared, it’s something to anticipate, not avoid.”

“‘I have made
Death a messenger of joy,’” Sharon quoted from a well-known scripture. “Yes,
but a forced reunion? Decided by—by committee? This . . . this
is shades of Logan’s Run. Fiction. My God, Trev, you can’t justify that by
scripture.”

“No.”

Sharon glanced at the screen where an image of Alec-to-be
gazed back at her, soberly. There was, in the handsome, but severe middle-aged
man, a great deal of the boy.

“What do I do, Trev?” she asked.

He moved to lay a hand on her shoulder. “What can you do?”

“Go back—forward—again and try to—”

“Sharon, come on. You know that’s not possible. It takes a
team of Lab Rats to run the Grid, and Magda would never send you. Besides, what
could you do there as you
now
that
you couldn’t as you
then
besides
create an anomaly?”

“Where will I be then, Trev, that I can’t convince him that
what he’s doing is wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that one.”

“Then I have to do something here. Maybe I need to spend
more time with him. Maybe—God, maybe it’s my fault.”

Trevor grasped her by both shoulders and swung her around to
face him. “Shar, that’s ridiculous. You’re a great mom. And Alec knows you love
him.”

“Maybe that’s not enough. Obviously that’s not enough.”

“Sharon . . .”

She glanced up directly into his eyes, capturing them. “Are
you going to share this data with the Board?”

“I have to.”

She knew that. Of course, she knew that. “Trevor, what do I
do?” she asked again. “My son is going to grow up to commit an atrocity that—”
She lost her words, her thoughts, her direction and hiccuped on the horrid
tightness in her throat.

“Let’s look at it carefully. Let’s let other analysts look
at it.”

“He’s my son, Trevor.”

“What do you think you should do? Go home and tell him his
future? What would you say? Sweetheart, I hate to tell you this, but you’re
going to turn into a monster?”

She could only shake her head. He reached out to her again,
laying a firm hand on her shoulder. “Go home, Sharon. Let me—let us get a
handle on this. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Go home.”

The thought terrified her. “How can I go home? How can I see
him knowing what I know?”

“You said it yourself: he’s your son.”

Her son. The son she couldn’t face. The son she no longer
knew how to relate to. In the end, she called her sister and asked if she would
mind keeping Alec overnight. A migraine, she said. She was desperate to see
him—to hold him—but she couldn’t. Not yet.

She went home—thought about going for a swim. She always
worked things out swimming—the soft, cool touch of water gliding over skin; the
rhythm of arms, legs and breath. But on her way out the door to the gym, she
got sucked into Alec’s room and spent an hour sitting on his bed, holding a
stuffed Tigger in her arms, staring at shelves covered with models of space
shuttles, starships, the space station, the first commercial Delta Clipper. A
child’s room; a simple boyhood jumble.

He had never shown the slightest sign of cruelty toward
animals or people. He was kind, gentle, thoughtful of others. How did someone
like Alec grow up to believe a committee of experts should determine the end of
a person’s life?

Don’t grow up to be a monster. If it were only that simple,
she would tell him that. But if she did and it was discovered, her career would
be forfeit. Worth it, she told herself fiercely. Yes, but there would be no way
to know if the words would alter anything short of future-tripping, and
QuestLabs would never allow a follow-up visit.

What if he didn’t grow up?

The thought came stealthily, leaving a slimy trail of
disgust. She recoiled from it, a torrent of icy horror pouring through her.
Dear God, what kind of mother could conjure such an idea?

She experienced, for only the second time in her life, a
complete cessation of thought and feeling. The first time was when she knew,
without hope, that Robert was not coming back.

When her brain began to process thoughts again, it occurred
to her to wonder if she would be sitting here now, having these thoughts if
Robert were alive. Her heart came back online then, and she wept until she had
no tears left. Then she slept, draped across Alec’s bed.

She did not sleep well. Her mind refused to shut down, now,
when she so desperately wanted it to. Trevor’s call woke her, derailing the
runaway train. He asked if he should come over; she told him “no.” He repeated
the things he had told her earlier in his office. She listened and tried to
believe.

oOo

She was not surprised to be summoned to Magda Oslovski’s
office the next morning. She was exhausted, a prisoner of guilt, dread and
confusion. Some of the dread evaporated when she saw that Dr. Oslovski was not
alone. Her husband, staff psychologist Vance Keller, was there as well. Both
wore expressions of compassion. Tears swam in Sharon’s eyes.

Magda rose and rounded her desk to enfold Sharon in a
motherly embrace. She seated the younger woman almost gently at a table by her
office window and took a seat opposite her, their knees nearly touching. She
reached across and took Sharon’s hands. “Trev gave us a full account of the
situation,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sharon. I realize this must be hellish for
you. There’s no way to prepare for something like this. The important thing now
is that you not let this affect your relationship with your son.”

“How?” It was the mew of a lost kitten. “How can I not let
it affect our relationship? I failed him, Magda. I
will
fail him.”

“No.” Vance Keller came to stand by his wife’s chair. His
eyes were kind, his expression firm. “A human life is far too complex, both in
nature and nurture, to assign cause to one factor—even one as critical as a
mother.”

“Or the loss of a father?” Sharon asked. She couldn’t look
at Vance. A surge of mixed guilt and resentment made her gaze too heavy to
lift. “He knows how his father died. He knows I’m continuing in the same work.
Maybe, deep down inside, he thinks that means I don’t care.”

“There’s no way to know what factors could contribute to . . .
Alec’s future actions,” said Vance.

Sharon tried to smile. “I don’t suppose you could just send
Alec and me back a few years. I’m sure I could talk Rob out of that last
future-trip.”

Magda squeezed her hand. “Sharon, there’s no way to know
what to adjust or edit in the past to change the present and future. That’s why
we don’t do it. You can only edit the present.”

“What you need to understand,” Vance added, “is that there
is only one thing you can do for Alec that we know will have positive
effects—love him. And raise him the best way you can.”

They spoke some more, let her cry, comforted her, then let
her go home to get Alec—to spend the rest of the day with him. She drove slowly
to her sister’s house, trying to fathom what she had done—or would do—that her
son would grown up so lacking in compassion and empathy.

As hard as it was for her to face, she could not deny that
she saw the seed of that deficit already, saw it in his avoidance of his
grandmother, his inability to comprehend her loneliness and alienation from the
life she had known. He had never even been to see her in the place she was
kept, safe from her own faltering faculties. He saw her only when she came out,
and then, he was usually shy and aloof.

Vance had told her to do her best. So far she had failed to
do that, afraid of stressing Alec too much in the wake of Robert’s loss. That
would change.

She pulled into her sister’s car park and sat for several
minutes gathering herself, afraid she’d be unable to respond to Alec. She needn’t
have worried. At the sight of him, smiling at her from beneath a milk mustache,
the strain of uncertainty fled. She hugged him extravagantly—a thing he seemed
to relish—and drank him in, her son, the light of her life.

“Is your head okay, Mom?” he asked her when she finally
released him. His concern seemed sincere.

She could only nod.

They had lunch at his favorite restaurant, a place crowded
with baseball memorabilia, and which served dishes named for major league
greats. She bought him a Matt Cain Mocha Freeze; they talked about the Giant’s
season; they named their favorite players and tried to match them with their
numbers.

They were walking back out to the car when she said, “Let’s
go visit Gramma.”

He just looked at her.

“Okay?” she prodded.

“Can you take me home first? I got homework.”

“On a Friday?”

“I got behind this week—it’s make up.”

“You got behind.”

“My game last night went long.”

Oh, God, she’d forgotten he’d had a Little League game. “Oh,”
she said weakly. “How’d you do?”

He shrugged as if it were of no importance. “We won . . .
I pitched,” he added, damning her further.

She nearly groaned. “You can do your homework when we get
home. I thought I’d invite Trev over for dinner. Would you like that?”