"Okay, let's do it."
"I'm not going to think any less of you if you don't want to."
"No, I'm up for it."
Rob pulled on a pair of gloves. "Remember that it's just about knowing that you can fight hurt. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Body only."
"Okay."
Rob talked Ian through it as they squared up to each other. He remembered getting this far with Tom as a kid and then being completely unable to even prod him. Tom, ten and not sure of his own strength, took it seriously and landed one in Rob's gut.
My baby boy. I can't do this.
Rob had abandoned the plan on the spot and signed Tom up for boxing class at the local club instead.
"That's it, that's it," Rob said.
Thwomp
. Ian jabbed at him and caught him in the ribs as he shielded his face instinctively. The blow was faster and harder than Rob expected. Well, Ian had at least twenty years on him. "Good. Hard as you can."
"Okay."
"Come on." Rob stepped into Ian and punched upward into his chest. It wasn't maximum effort, but it hurt. Rob saw it on his face. "Come on. Back at me."
They threw a few more punches almost politely, concentrating on avoiding each other's heads. But then Ian stepped it up a notch, and so did Rob, and then Rob hit him a little too hard in the upper arm with a quick follow-up in the kidneys as Ian hunched over.
The punch that flew straight back at Rob nearly winded him. It was instant, accurate, and bloody hard. Rob returned it equally hard without thinking. He felt under threat. It was instinct.
Ian was much,
much
better at this than he should have been.
"Fuck," Rob said, taking a step back. Ian kept coming. Rob pushed him back. "Break. Stop."
And then he looked at Ian and his heart sank.
The guy in front of him wasn't Ian. More to the point, he was, but not the same Ian who'd wowed Livvie and that Rob had grown used to over the last few weeks. His hair was mid-brown and his face was rounder, younger, a stranger again, all except the eyes.
"Oh Christ, I'm sorry," Rob said. "I'm so sorry."
Ian stuck one hand under his arm to pull the glove off and felt his face. Rob could see his anguish at losing control.
All my fucking fault.
He took off his gloves and put his hands on Ian's shoulders.
"Deep breaths, kiddo. You can get back to it."
"Okay." Ian used that word a hundred times a day. "I'm okay."
"You're not. Come on. Let's pack this in and go and calm down."
Rob was distraught. After all that time and effort, after Ian was on a steady course and Mike was finally getting his photo documentation in order, Rob had fucked it all up by pushing the kid too far. They were back to square one. Ian went upstairs to shower, leaving Rob sitting on the stairs and wondering how the hell he was going to tell Mike and Livvie.
How was Ian going to cope with this new face?
Rob went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door. "Ian, are you all right?"
"I can sort this." The water was still running. "It's not your fault, Rob. I'm the only one who can fix myself."
Rob spent the next couple of hours at the kitchen table, trying to work out how to resolve this. They'd have to start the process over again, or Ian would have to get used to the fact that his life would be severely limited by things he'd never be able to do.
When Mike and Livvie got home, Ian was still upstairs with the door slightly ajar. Mike looked at Rob and his face fell. They knew each other too well.
"What's wrong? Is it Ian??"
"He's in his room," Rob said. "We were boxing. He morphed. My fault."
Mike went thudding up the stairs and Rob braced for incoming. Livvie put her hand on his arm.
"It's nothing we can't handle, Rob."
"No, I ballsed it up. I should have known better."
Livvie followed Mike upstairs. Rob could hear the buzz of voices, and then the thud-thud-thud as Mike raced down to the hall again.
He stalked into the kitchen. "What the fuck were you thinking, Rob? Seriously, what the fuck?"
Rob had rarely seen Mike angry enough to eff and blind before, let alone angry with
him
. What else could he say? Ian wasn't like any other kid, and Rob had ignored that fact, thinking that persistence was the answer to all of life's problems. He was gutted. And the last bloke he wanted to upset was Mike.
"I know what I've done, mate. I'm sorry."
"Jesus Christ, the attorney's
seen
him." Mike leaned over him with one hand on the table. It was an odd kind of anger, very cold and white. "What the hell is he going to do now? Any terrific ideas?"
Rob wasn't used to problems he had no power to solve and that weren't his to learn to live with. "I can't change Ian back, mate. He'll come downstairs when he's ready, and then we can work something out. Meanwhile, I'll piss off so you don't feel obliged to hit me."
He got up and went outside to stand on the rear deck, leaning on the rail to watch the dusk fall. Well, they could always start over with a new lawyer. Mike didn't answer to the hired help. It was the dent to Ian's confidence that was the real problem.
He's got the backbone for a fight, though. I bloody well hurt all over.
Eventually the back door opened and Mike walked up to lean on the rail next to him. Rob was trying to think of a new apology when Mike put his hand on his back.
"Sorry, buddy. What a goddamn drama queen. I apologize."
Rob did a theatrical lip wobble, relieved that he was forgiven. "Our first row. I'm going home to Mother."
"I must be hormonal or something."
"Well, if we can't take a pop at each other now and again and shake hands, we're not real mates, are we?"
"I'm even more invested in Ian than I realised. That's kind of scary."
"I'm not going to fight you for custody."
Mike didn't smile. "Yes, I know what my issues are. I'm that goddamn cat."
"What cat?"
"Oh, a broody cat. Can you call cats broody? Whatever. I just want to make everything right for Ian and I can't. Not even with my resources."
"Welcome to the classic dad experience, Zombie. Okay, I'd better go and talk to him. How pissed off is he with me?"
"Not at all. He always finds a reason not to feel hard done by."
"I'll tell you something," Rob said. "He could punch the shit out of me. And not just because he's younger."
"What do you mean, that this is something linked to his genes?"
"No idea, but you can look at the bruises." Rob straightened up and braced himself to face Ian. "I need go and unfuck this."
When he tapped on the bedroom door, Ian was reading in the sitting room of his suite. It was actually hard to think of him as Ian for a moment. Rob began to realise just how much of a leper Ian might become. It didn't bode well.
"Hi mate. How are you feeling?"
Ian looked up. His eyes still hadn't changed like the rest of his features. That was something. "Bruised. You?"
"Yeah, I've got some lumps."
I'm going to have be careful with you, son.
"How are we going sort this morphing thing, then?"
"I'm meditating. Not now, obviously. I've got photos of the way I looked before. I'll keep concentrating on them." He was reading something on the tablet that Mike had given him. "I think that really was me, you know."
"Can I do anything? Talk? Sod off?" Rob glanced around the room, which was as predictably as clean and tidy as a barracks. The black and white photo of Maggie's dad stood on the windowsill. Rob wandered over to take another look. "Maybe if you stop trying and get an early night, it'll help."
"Maybe."
When Rob picked up the photo, he felt like he was intruding on a private, silent conversation. That picture must have meant the world to Ian. By the look of it, it wasn't a professional job, more like the a typical snap taken by a mate, a bit posed and self-conscious with the focus as much on the hardware as the man. But as he studied David Dunlop, he realised what he was drawn to: the man's face, and in particular his eyes. He was clean-shaven with buzz-cut hair that could have been anywhere between brown and mid-blonde – perhaps even ginger. It was hard to tell from a black and white photo. But the eyes were familiar.
If Rob imagined David Dunlop a lot younger and darker, then he'd seen that face before.
Is that wishful thinking? If it's not, then I bet I know how Ian comes up with the faces.
Maybe Ian hadn't realised how he was doing it.
Rob handed him the picture. "Why don't you take a look at that and compare it with your last photo?"
Ian took a few minutes to scrutinize both images. Eventually he shrugged.
"I hadn't noticed before. That's what comes of not believing the mirror for so long."
It certainly couldn't be a family resemblance, but Rob didn't point that out. Ian didn't need any more reminders of what he wasn't. Somehow, though, he'd reproduced some of the features of a man who couldn't have been related to him. He'd made that happen himself. Whatever took, that ability was still somewhere within Ian. But he was the only one who could find it.
He'd certainly found the ability to punch hard and fast. Rob wondered what else lay within, waiting to be let out.
KWA STAFF RESTAURANT, LANSING
SEPTEMBER.
Optical illusions were a bitch.
This puzzle couldn't be decoded or calculated. Dru would either see the solution, or she wouldn't, and there was no process or knowledge that she could apply to work it out.
She put her sandwich to one side and tried defocusing. No matter how long she stared at the apparently random black and white pattern, her brain still couldn't form an image. How much longer should she give it before turning to the back page for the solution? Her eyes only had one chance to get this. Once the image was revealed, she could never go back to seeing the illusion in its raw, unsolved state. She found it fascinating that a written answer – a description, not an image – could instantly turn the random patches into a clear picture. It said a lot about the way the brain was wired.
Dru hated giving in. If she looked at the answer, she couldn't avoid seeing the other solutions and ruining the rest of the puzzles. She laid the book face down on the table and took another bite of her sandwich.
It was her first visit to the staff restaurant in a couple of months. When she lunched there, she created her own exclusion zone. She wasn't sure now if nobody tried to sit at her table because she read while she ate, or because she was the corporate Grim Reaper. People took furtive glances at her, probably thinking she knew their fates in the reorganization.
A shadow fell across her table. Alex was standing over her. He nodded at the puzzle book.
"They're weird, aren't they?"
"Optical illusions? You said it." Dru pushed her chair back a little. Maybe he was going to join her. "It's the black and white ones that get me. I just can't see this one, and I daren't look at the answers and spoil the rest."
"Want to know?"
Dru dithered for a moment. Perhaps she was making a religion of not quitting. Persistence could get out of hand. "Okay."
"It's a horse running through trees."
As soon as she turned the book over and looked again at the black and white pattern, the randomness had vanished and she saw the horse. It would always be a horse now. She could never un-see it or imagine something else.
"Damn," she said. "So it is."
"But there's still no actual horse. That's the crazy thing. You fill in the gaps around a few fixed points that
could
be a horse."
Dru had learned never to underestimate people with no formal education in her field. "Why do we all eventually see the same picture, then?"
"Maybe because we all learn what a horse ought to look like. Generally speaking. The main points. Makes you wonder what someone would see if they didn't know what a horse was."
It had the makings of a great debate. Dru indicated the tubular steel chair next to her. "Are you going to join me?"
"Thanks, ma'am, but I was just passing through and I saw you looking like you were going to pull your hair out. Looks real nice, by the way. I almost didn't recognise you when you first had it done."
Alex gave her a polite nod and went on his way. The brief exchanges she had with him were often the most enlightening. With the puzzle solved, her thoughts went straight back to Kinnery, and Weaver's apparent acceptance of his confession.
Something still didn't fit.
Weaver had played her the recording of the Skype call about Maggie Dunlop. But no penny dropped. There was no eureka moment when the random patches became the horse. Kinnery's story didn't explain how the leak about Maggie playing the mule – or the guinea pig – became the rumour about a transgenic child. It didn't explain why she'd tell a friend about it. And it didn't explain why Kinnery had sold his share in KWA, no matter how big the
bill for his divorce settlement, and moved to a more expensive city in Canada.