Deadline (27 page)

His eyes fell on Finney’s letter again. Something had kept him from reading it after Sue gave it to him, and something pushed him away from it now. Yet something drew him too. What were his old friend’s last written words?

Opening the envelope, Jake rehearsed what led to the letter—Holly Hannah’s article on anti-abortion activists. As he recalled, Holly had interviewed a housewife or two and a couple of inarticulate full-time crusaders. Finney found his way in as a well-known businessman who’d thrown himself into the controversy. Jake didn’t remember the details, only that he felt distinctly embarrassed for his friend as he read the article. While the two often disagreed, Jake knew Finney meant well. This was nowhere evident in the article. It was a different Finney—a mean-spirited chauvinist who wanted to control women and take away their rights. Jake shook his head and wondered why Finney had said what he did. It sounded so irrational and out of character.

Strangely, though, years of misunderstanding and bad press never changed Finney’s convictions.
Nothing
seemed to change Finney’s convictions. Jake shook his head in irked wonder.
You’d think a guy would eventually learn.
He’d never known a man who could be so open-minded and accepting on so many things, and so intractably dogmatic and unbending on others. If Finney had been misunderstood, Jake reasoned, he’d only brought it on himself.

The letter was a page and a half long, neatly printed in a font Jake didn’t recognize. Finney had shown Jake a set of two hundred fonts he’d stored on his computer’s hard disk. This must be one of them. Jake noted the letter was properly addressed and directed to the
Trib’s
“Editorial Staff.” Well, what did his old buddy have to say?

Dear Friends,

My reason for writing is your October 20 article, “The anti-abortion activists: who are they?”

First, I believe the semantics of your coverage would bias any neutral reader against the prolife position. The term “anti-abortion” is repeatedly used throughout the article—no less than twelve times. In contrast, the other position is always called “prochoice.”

“Anti-abortion” sounds negative; “prochoice” sounds positive. It appears to me the
Tribune
refers to every other movement by what it calls itself, whether gays, feminists, environmentalists, or the “prochoice” movement. I don’t know any prolife group that refers to itself as “anti-abortionist.” It’s always “prolife.” So why is the prolife movement the conspicuous exception to your practice of calling groups by their actual names?

If you choose to use the term “anti-abortion,” fairness suggests you should use “anti-life” to describe the other position. At the very least you should call it “pro-abortion.” If you refrain from this out of courtesy to those holding the position, then please show the same courtesy to prolifers. I’m not asking for favoritism, just fairness.

My other concern is that in twenty years of reading the
Trib
almost every day, I have never once seen a picture of an aborted baby. The article seemed to silently agree with the prochoice advocate who first said the preborn baby was a mere “blob of tissue,” then condemned the “anti-abortionists” for displaying those “bloody and intimidating pictures.” But I don’t understand. The
Tribune
showed photos of children dying in Vietnam and in the Middle East, Somalia and Rwanda. Why would you refuse to show the equally real and equally convincing pictures of children killed by abortion? And why, when some prolifer holds up such a picture, is she angrily condemned as if she were the one responsible for the very killing to which she is objecting?

Of course these are terrible pictures. Any picture of a dead baby is terrible—not because of the picture itself, but the reality it depicts. Prochoicers are against the pictures of killed babies. Prolifers are against the killing of the babies in the pictures.

Censoring these pictures from the debate is like censoring pictures of slaughtered baby seals from discussions about animal rights. How can citizens make an intelligent decision on any issue when vital information is withheld? Let both sides and let the media show whatever pictures they can verify as authentic and unretouched. Why should anyone be afraid of a level playing field for the truth? (Unless their own position isn’t true.) If this is just a ‘blob of tissue’ and not a baby, why are we so opposed to looking at it?

Whoever controls the semantics, and censors the information shared with the audience, inevitably wins the debate. I’m not asking you to take my side. I’m just asking you to tell the truth. I’m asking you to give your readers the chance to make up their own minds based on an honest and unbiased presentation of scientific facts. I’m asking you to be fair.

Sincerely,

Finney Keels

Jake sighed. Reading this was like swallowing a big pill. It caught in his throat and left a terrible aftertaste. It was vintage Finney, all right. How could someone so sharp when it came to business be so naive and simplistic about complex social issues? Finney just didn’t get it.

Jake examined Finney’s familiar signature, which he’d seen evolve since they learned cursive in Mrs. Petersen’s third-grade class. He put down the letter, gazing up at the ceiling with his head propped back on the recliner. He sat there a long time before he pushed down the foot rest, clutched his empty mug, and wandered toward the kitchen for a refill.

Jake took the miniature carton of French Vanilla creamer from his refrigerator, dumped a large helping in his cup, then picked up the coffee pot and poured it, watching the white liquid turn into a swirling sea of creamy brown. He breathed deeply, as if doing so would make him think more clearly about the investigation, and perhaps, more clearly about life.

The firm knock on the door startled Jake, yanking him from the semi-stupor his mind drifted in and out of on lazy Saturdays. He rushed to the bathroom mirror to be sure his face wasn’t too scary. He noted the bloodshot eyes, the ragged stubble, the matted hair.
It could be worse.
As he walked to the door he added,
But not much
.

Jake opened his door, half expecting the landlord or somebody’s lost relative. He was surprised to see two men in dark suits, both serious and important looking, their dignity and composure accentuating his own lack of both. The one, solidly built and fiftyish, was about Jake’s height, with sandy red hair, wet and neatly combed. He held out a badge in a little leather case, just like in the movies. The other, jet black hair and deep tan, had a distinctively rugged look, like a man who’d worked his way into a respectable profession from a career that started as a nightclub bouncer. Jake recognized them immediately but couldn’t place where he’d seen them.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Woods. I’m Special Agent Colin Sutter, this is Agent Jeffrey Mayhew.” Mayhew nodded dutifully, like the junior partner of a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “We’re with the FBI.” Jake stared at the badge. It looked authentic, though he didn’t ever recall seeing a real one.

“We need to ask you to accompany us to our office. Or, we can talk with you here. But in any case, it’s imperative that we talk immediately.”

A moment before, he’d been gazing through a giant telescope and studying the distant wonders of Elyon’s universe. But now Finney was thrust into what seemed another dimension, neither heaven nor earth. He felt like he was in a huge theater, viewing a curved screen. Like a planetarium, yet real, not simulated. He had the feeling he’d become much smaller, that he was inside of something—or someone. He was the face of the camera, intimately close to something magnificent on the verge.

Before him was a huge ball, being vigorously assaulted by swimming threads with tiny heads. Both ball and threads were parts of living beings, but not living beings themselves. The threads frantically searched for an opening to the ball, trying this place then that. In time they weakened, resigning themselves to failure, wilting into oblivion. One by one they fell off, until center stage switched to one, which showed hope and promise. Yes, it was penetrating, moving inside the ball, and somehow changing it, infusing it with life. Apart from each other, both ball and threads were incomplete. But together they produced something mysterious, something that felt to Finney like the magic of life.

Twenty-three grooves from the thread-shaped sperm joined with twenty-three grooves in the ball-shaped egg, meshing together like the two halves of a zipper. A great explosion produced a mighty sound and the full spectrum of colors, of what seemed galactic proportions, like a supernova. The two separate strands of twenty-three melded into a single seamless unit of forty-six, creating a unique genetic code that had never and would never be duplicated. Finney knew he was witnessing conception. It was the sound and spectrum of life. As Finney watched, a library of a thousand volumes, six hundred thousand printed pages of five hundred words per page, poured itself into a single strand of DNA.

Suddenly powerful singing enveloped him. He’d never heard the song before, but after hearing the chorus once, he knew it. It was a song about Elyon—his majesty, his greatness, and his power as Creator. Finney saw now he wasn’t witnessing this remarkable event alone but was surrounded by many others who watched with equal fascination.

Finney stared at the ball that was now so much more than a ball. It was a person, fully a person, and her beauty transfixed him. Yes,
her.
He could read her genetic registry and knew this was a girl. Now a great angel, one of the special angels that continuously beholds the face of the Father, spoke forth a wondrous name, a name he had never heard, a name he felt he could never pronounce. It was the girl’s name, her true name, no matter what she might be called on earth.

Finney felt exuberance. Joy. Exhilaration like he’d never known. A strong steady sound undergirded everything. He looked to find man or angel beating on a great drum. Surprisingly, he couldn’t locate the sound’s source.

To what could he compare what he now felt? It was several things at once. The joy of consummating his relationship with Sue, of being told there was a new life within her, of hearing in the doctor’s office their children’s heartbeats for the first time, of holding little Jenny and Angela and Finn in his arms.

Yes, of course, that was the sound he heard! The sound of a heartbeat, the child’s heartbeat. He knew it would be almost three weeks before this magnificent creation would have a beating heart, but heaven anticipated the sound, providing it now for all to hear. And why not, for all that this child would ever be was there now in that single cell, not at all simple but incredibly complex, endowed with every bit of genetic information she would ever have, determining height, color of eyes, thickness of hair, and untold millions of invisible details of design. The child’s heartbeat became a lovely melody, held up by the steady harmony of a more powerful beating sound, the sound of her mother’s heart. Mother and child, harmony and melody. He realized this was a unique musical score, every pregnancy an original concerto.

There was another sound, like the approaching tide he’d heard so often at the beach, the Manzanita beach where his family spent so many wonderful vacations. The pounding of the surf. Waves. Yes, brain waves. Brain waves which couldn’t be measured until forty days after this first day. The foreshadowed sound of those waves swept across the theater. Here was life before the signals by which life was measured in the dark world. All this girl would ever be she now was. Not potential, but actual. The life blood of Elyon had been poured out into her. And poured out for her. This was creation in his image, and redemption for his glory. Here before Finney’s wide eyes the unfolding drama of redemption played out in the eloquent witness of one tiny person.

Finney’s wonder exploded into joyful weeping, loud and unashamed. This wasn’t the shadowy glimpse of joy he’d sometimes caught in the twilight world, but joy in its full and total sense, joy that exceeded his ability to contain it, a contagious joy caught from and passed on to all those around him. For Finney, in a moment’s realization, had understood what this event was all about and why he had been so suddenly ushered to this place to observe
this
miracle of life’s beginning, and not another. He looked around him at the smiles on the faces of both men and angels. He saw many familiar faces, some of the same ones who had been there at his entrance to heaven’s birthing room. There was his mother and Jenny and…so many others. Of course. It all made sense.

The great concert moved to its climax, where Finney sensed it was his part to clash the cymbals at just the right moment. The moment now upon him, he raised his voice above the vibrant sounds of life rising from the new creation. He gestured at the colorful animated single-cell child, pulsating with life.

In the swirling tornado of color and sound, Finney shouted to all, “Do you see? Do you understand? My daughter, my child, is carrying a child. The tiny baby is Elyon’s. She is Angela’s. She is Bruce’s. She is Sue’s. And she is mine!” Tears formed in his eyes, refracting the colors of the new creation. “Behold, my granddaughter!”

Thunderous cheers and applause followed, but this was not yet the climax. The wonder of the moment overwhelmed Finney, his one hand firmly grasping Jenny’s, the other his mother’s. All eyes focused on the threesome, the family awaiting both completion and reunion. In an instant of insight, Finney was given the name Angela and Bruce would call the child, a name they’d not yet thought of, and he spoke that name and listened as words from his heart found their expression:

Karina, whose name means “gift”: