“No.”
“And why do you think he wished to kill you?”
“Hatred. Disgust. Revenge. Madness.”
“All those reasons were no doubt valid,” said Clementine. “But that wasn’t his real purpose.”
“Then what was his real purpose?”
Clementine leaned forward in her chair. “He was tidying up.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Think about it,” said Clementine. “You were probably his first victim. If he killed all the other women he raped and broke their arms as he broke yours, you’re the only living witness to his identity. You can link him to his method. You are a danger to him. He doesn’t want to get caught before he gets it right, don’t you see.”
I saw.
~ * ~
3
IT TURNED OUT THAT THE
tremor in the Berkshires originated in Iceland. A moderate earthquake occurred in the countryside about a hundred miles from Reykjavik. Houses were destroyed. Sheep were asphyxiated, but no human beings died. No one, not even Henry, knew how long these small mercies would continue. Few besides him took any great interest in this pox of seismic events. As a result of its long experience with the deity, humanity tended to look upward for doomsday—a giant meteor like the one that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, or maybe a black hole that would eat the universe, compress it to the size of a molecule or something even smaller, then free it from gravity and let loose another Big Bang.
It took me three days or so to realize that Adam was gone forever. He wasn’t gone from my mind, and I bore him no ill will, but wherever he was now, he was doing me no good. Mentally, I put him in the ground and covered him up. And after that, like a young widow passing cookies at a wake, I might have returned a certain kind of look if one came my way. None did. The whole world was leaving me alone with a vengeance.
Then the refrain: Henry called. He asked the usual question. I said of course I could fly tomorrow.
“Where we’re going, it may be a little cooler than New York,” he said. “There may be a dinner party.”
Henry was already there. Or on his way there from somewhere else.
My mystery destination turned out to be Paris. The house to which I was driven was in the Marais, between the Place des Vosges and the river. It was very early in the morning, before first light. When I rang the doorbell a tall young African, thin as an eyelash, wearing a silk dressing gown, let me in frozen-faced, then disappeared. I waited fifteen minutes for him to come back. This didn’t happen. Supposing that the African had gone back to bed, I wandered deeper into the house. I heard someone coming down the stairs. Henry intercepted me in the orangery, in which actual orange trees and other exotic plants grew in wooden tubs. He seemed glad to see me and led me into the garden. It was lovely. Dew sparkled on the flowers. Whimsically pollarded hedges made me smile. Fountains played, dispersing a faint aroma of chlorine. Birds sang. The day was bright and breezy. The sigh of traffic on the quais was muted because it was so early in the morning.
After changing into jeans and sneakers, Henry and I went for a walk along the river. We sat down on a bench just beyond the Pont de la Concorde.
Henry said, “Have you decided?”
“About the embryo?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Something about it troubles me,” I said.
“Specifically?”
“Are you planning to enhance this embryo?”
“Interesting question,” Henry replied.
“Because if you are, Henry,” I said, “I don’t see the point of the exercise. The child won’t be the child we made.”
“Children,” Henry corrected. “Amerigo’s people can produce a large number of embryos in vitro.”
I said, “Won’t they be all alike?”
“They’d be siblings, not clones.”
“But Amerigo’s people would manipulate their DNA?”
“You’re still troubled by that?”
“Henry, I will never cease to be troubled by that,” I replied. “I think it negates the entire purpose of the enterprise.”
“So you’re saying no?”
“I’m saying you should reconsider.”
“What if that means the embryos aren’t strong enough to survive? Or if they do, they’ll live a life of slavery to the enhanced?”
“That’s a leap.”
“You think so?”
Henry frowned, for him the equivalent of a shout. The two of us fell silent.
How many lovers’ quarrels is it possible to have in less than a month? Answer: It depends on how many lovers and how many issues you have. Adam and I had put an end to the best sex either of us had ever experienced with the exchange of two monosyllables. Now Henry and I seemed to be free-falling toward another sad ending while talking our heads off. Adam had been my lover, and I had loved his body, but I say again, I hadn’t loved him and never could have. It had never crossed my mind that he and I might produce a child, or that either one of us would want it to survive if we did. On the other hand, Henry was not my lover and I had never let myself feel physical attraction to him, but I loved him. In fact, I was an inch away from being in love with him. Having a child with him, even though it might be conceived in a laboratory, and even though I would never see it and would never know what happened to it, would be a wonderful thing. The two of us would be joined together in the child, and in its children. I wanted to protect it, I
had
to protect it. This was something my blood instructed me to do.
Nevertheless, my impulse, all but irresistible, was to just say yes. I resisted it.
“This is getting us nowhere,” I said. “I’m going for a run.”
Henry said, “Does that mean the discussion is over?”
“It means I need time to think. Running helps me think.”
“I’ll come, too,” Henry said.
We ran all the way to the Eiffel Tower, crossed the Seine on the Pont d’lena, and ran back along the Left Bank. There were people everywhere. No doubt the chaps encircled us, but as usual they were unseen. As my body warmed up and my mind calmed down, an inexplicable mixture of worry and happiness flooded my being.
I was hungry by the time we got back to the house. We had both broken a sweat. The morning air was damp and chilly. A sharp wind blew. I shivered.
Henry said, “You should take a hot shower.”
“Then what?”
Henry wiped his sweaty face with his bare forearm.
“Let’s see what the day brings,” he said.
I saw him again at breakfast, served by the anorexic young African who was now dressed for company in a black jacket and striped pants. While Henry ate, he read
Le Monde
on an iPad. Once or twice he read excerpts aloud, translating them at sight into English. The tableau was Victorian—Father reading the paper in a good loud voice, Mother smiling happily as he shared the most interesting bits with her.
Finally, Henry shut down his iPad and said, “Shall we wrap this up?”
Wrap what up? The question of the embryo? Breakfast? Everything? Of course I knew exactly what he was talking about.
I said, “Henry, I’m truly torn.”
“I know,” he said. “Do you want more time to think?”
“I don’t think time is going to be my friend in this situation,” I said. “May I ask you a question?”
He didn’t say no.
I said, thinking of Melissa, “Suppose I just can’t do it. Then what happens?”
“In what sense?”
“If not me, who?”
Henry was surprised by the question. What’s more—talk about breakthroughs—he made no effort to conceal his surprise.
He said, “There are no backup candidates.”
“There aren’t? Why?”
He didn’t answer—not even a change of expression, not even a shrug. For better or worse, I was the lucky girl. I could not understand this choice, but I did not press the issue. Sometimes even I know when to shut up. Maybe Henry himself didn’t understand it, on the conscious level. Maybe he had made up his mind about this in the same way he invented things that shook the world. It just happened. Now, clearly, the moment had come for me to say yes or no. I told myself I was making too big a thing of this, that my moral objections were a pretense. When it came right down to it, scruples had seldom applied to much of anything in my life or as far as I could see, in anyone else’s. Whatever they might blame for their errors and misfortunes, people did what they wanted to do.
The fact was, I
wanted
to do this even though my every corpuscle advised me not to do it. Choose life was the law of the blood. Live forever somehow, anyhow. The embryos, messengers to the future, could in theory live forever, or until they were thawed, warmed in a bath of water, and commanded to wake up. And then they would be fertile and multiply, carrying Henry’s DNA and mine, mingled forever, into whatever future awaited them and our ghosts.
I knew this was malarkey, of course I knew, but speechless as a maiden in a bodice ripper, I gave Henry my answer by touching his hand and sweetly nodding my head. I had tears in my eyes. In a love story, Henry would have kissed me. No such luck. Nevertheless, I had been chosen by Mr. Darcy out of all the girls in the world.
Later that morning we flew to Milan, where in Amerigo’s laboratory a young doctor harvested my ova—he didn’t tell me how many—and passed them to his assistant, who carried them off to their rendezvous in the petri dish.
~ * ~
SEVEN
~ * ~
1
IT TOOK CLEMENTINE MANY MONTHS
to nail Bear Mulligan, but in the end she managed it. She found seven cases in six different places of very young women who had been raped and murdered while Bear was known to have been in the vicinity. All had compound fractures of the left arm.
“Two in Venezuela, one each in Arizona and Colorado,” Clementine told me. “Three in China—two in Beijing, one near Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. The murderer’s DNA was found at the crime scenes in the U.S. and Beijing. The specimens match Bear’s DNA.”
To deliver this news, she had invited me to tea in her offices on Fifty-fifth Street. She seemed to be alone in the large suite, but maybe she wasn’t. The doors of all the other offices were closed. Phones rang, but only once before they were answered by man or machine. One of the smaller offices had been converted into a cozy sitting room, with soft lighting and floral slipcovers on the chairs and sofa. Although it was December, the thermostat was set at no more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. You could practically see your breath. I shuddered. Clementine wore a blouse with short sleeves.
“This might be upsetting, but you should be aware of the facts,” Clementine said between bites of cake. “Both American victims quite strikingly resemble you. The others were about your size and slim, like you. And as young as you were when you were attacked.”