Epitaph Road Read online

  It was time to go back. And face the music. Even if there wouldn’t be any.

  I wouldn’t even ask to see his face;

  I’d settle for the music of his voice from down the hall —

  a three a.m. cry for his mother’s milk.

  — EPITAPH FOR LUKE HONEY (MAY 6, 2067–AUGUST 7, 2067),

  BY MARIA HONEY, HIS MOTHER,

  NOVEMBER 2, 2068

  CHAPTER ONE

  JUNE 16, 2097 — THIRTY YEARS LATER

  Glum and restless, I stared out through the living room window as rain ticked sideways against the glass and flowed steadily down. In the late-afternoon murk, the glossy streaks of wet looked like narrow metal bars. This wasn’t a prison, but the nonstop Sunday downpour made it feel like one. Outside, the sprawling carpet of grass drank in the cloudburst. I could practically see the individual blades growing, which meant more work for me. But not today, a bad day for mowing lawns. Or hopping on my bike and heading off to somewhere — anywhere — more exciting.

  Maybe the rainfall was trying to tell me something. Because what I should have been doing was getting ready for my trials. Confined by the weather to this big old house, with most of its other residents in their rooms or otherwise quietly keeping to themselves, I had only one excuse for not studying: Mom had asked me to meet her here. She was going to make time in her busy schedule for a “visit” with me. How could I have refused?

  Anyway, I had a reason — besides just getting a chance to talk to her for a change — to meet with her. I had my own topic to chat about. It was a topic I believed she’d been avoiding.

  I heard the office door open, and a moment later she appeared. The two other women in the room glanced up and went back to their reading. She smiled and plopped down on the couch next to me and for a moment joined me in gazing silently out the window. Her mascara looked clumpier than usual, maybe to mask the fatigue in her eyes. It wasn’t working.

  “How are you, Kellen?” she said finally. She rested her hand on mine. It felt comfortingly familiar but irritating at the same time.

  “Terrific,” I said. “Smooth summer so far. We won our game yesterday. I got two doubles.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “Too bad you weren’t there.”

  “I wanted to be.”

  “Three,” I said, silhouetting three fingers against the gray daylight.

  “What?”

  “Three. Games. You’ve been to three. I’ve played eleven.”

  “Work keeps getting in the way. We’ve had…complications. But they’re temporary. Things will be back to normal soon.”

  Normal. “Normal” meant she would’ve gotten to four or five games. Her job with PAC — the Population Apportionment Council — was her top priority. I was number two. “It’s okay.” I’d raised a subject. Not my main subject, but a start. I’d made a point, maybe.

  “It’s not okay. I simply don’t have a choice.”

  I shrugged. She had a choice. She had smarts, degrees, experience, other employers sniffing around. She would’ve had no problem finding a different job. But I was done with this topic. I freed my hand from hers and pretended to straighten a sock.

  “How are your studies going?” she asked, getting to what I figured all along was her motive for our “visit.”

  “Have you talked to Dad yet?” I said. “About me going to see him?”

  “I’ve been so busy. And you need time to prepare for your trials.”

  “My studies are fine. You said you’d get him a message. Or talk to him about it the next time he called.”

  “What about your history class?” Mom said, not wavering from the topic of my education. “What do you think of Ms. Anderson as an instructor? Is she getting you the essential material? I’ve heard she can be…unconventional.”

  Anderson? She was unconventional, maybe, but in a good way. “She’s doing great. I’m doing great. Why?”

  “I want you to think about something,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “I’m already thinking about something.”

  “This is more important than your travel plans, Kellen. What I want you to think about is your trials. Your life, in other words.”

  “Travel plans? You think I’m just interested in travel? What I’m interested in is seeing Dad. I want to spend time with him. I want to see how he lives. I want to see how guys live.”

  “And what I want is for you to consider something really vital,” she said, plowing ahead. “I want you to consider seeking help if you get close to your exam date and don’t feel completely confident you can pass with flying colors.”

  “Help studying, you mean?”

  “Dr. Mack knows the chair of the regional trials board.”

  Dr. Mack. Rebecca Mack. Mom’s big boss. The head of PAC. She wouldn’t just know the chair of the PAC trials board, she probably had the final say on the woman’s appointment to the position. The chair, whoever she might be, was no doubt firmly under Rebecca Mack’s thumb. She would fold if Dr. Mack pressured her, even just a little.

  I fidgeted with my other sock. “What about Dad?”

  “I know this feels as if I’m stepping on your toes, Kellen, but I just want what’s best —”

  Her e-spond chimed. She got to her feet and moved to the window, eyes out on the gloom and splash. “Heather Dent,” she said into the mouthpiece, just loud enough for me to overhear. “I’m home,” she said. “I was just talking to Kellen. We’ve hardly had time —”

  A pause. “Nothing new,” she said after a long moment of listening.

  Another pause, then: “Four days. We may not hear from her again.”

  More listening. A glance at me. “It’s all in motion on this end. I’m monitoring everything.” She snuck another look at me. I tried to put on a bored expression. “And there?”

  She hesitated, listening. “If you need me,” she said. Then: “Let me check.” With her back half turned to me, she fingered her display, studied the feedback, and resumed her conversation. “The earliest flight will get me to San Diego about eight. I’ll be on it.”

  She returned to the couch but didn’t sit. “Give me a hug,” she ordered.

  A hug. Her cure for everything. “You’re leaving again?”

  “I have to. But Paige will be here.”

  Aunt Paige. Aunt Reliable. “How long this time?”

  “A few days. We’ll talk when I get back.”

  “Sure.” I got up and let her put her arms around me. I let her stand on her tiptoes and kiss me on the cheek. Then she was off, hurrying across the room and angling for the stairs.

  An angry rat-a-tat-tat sound pulled my attention away from her and toward the window. Hail had replaced rain. While strong gusts of wind threw the hard white ice pellets against the glass, I stood and watched and wondered what was going on.

  I longed for the cavernous ache to ease

  as frost bloomed white on the lawn and

  small schoolgirls trudged back and forth

  in their colorful coats,

  but night after night, still heartsick,

  I stood at the bedroom mirror and examined

  my naked belly,

  growing plump and tight and blue-veined

  with the startling bulk of our son, Jimmy,

  a treasured comfort now,

  but in those acutely empty days mostly a reminder

  of you and what might have been.

  — EPITAPH FOR JAMES CABLE

  (SEPTEMBER 3, 2036–AUGUST 6, 2067),

  BY LAUREL CABLE, HIS WIFE,

  NOVEMBER 3, 2068

  CHAPTER TWO

  JUNE 19, 2097

  I listened to the two new girls — Tia and Sunday — outside my bedroom door, giggling, talking loud, like spectators at the zoo waiting for feeding time. Besides their names and ages — fourteen, same as me — most of what I knew about them was that they were cousins and they hadn’t spent much time around boys. When we’d met the day before, they couldn’t ke
ep their eyes off me. Of course I’d been a curiosity my whole life, so I was pretty much used to the animal-on-exhibit treatment by now.

  The girls had just moved from a small town in Nebraska where the male population was in single digits. The big rooming house my mom and aunt owned had vacancies, and it was near the University of Washington, where the girls’ moms were starting new jobs. From halfway across the country they’d negotiated a package deal that meant they could keep their families together.

  Coincidentally, Nebraska also happened to be the birthplace of my grandfather, Joshua Winters. So in my mind the girls had something going for them already. Besides the cute factor, that is.

  Silently, I got up, slipped into shorts and a T-shirt, and yanked open the door. “Hey!” I growled, and the taller, blond-haired girl — Sunday — almost went backward through the hallway wall. I hadn’t surprised the dark-haired one, though. Tia just looked at me as if she was bored, meeting my gaze in a little contest. Then she laughed. It was a great laugh, from somewhere deep inside her chest.

  “You’re funny for a boy,” she said. “Most of the boys I’ve seen have long faces.”

  “I wonder why,” I said. The irony in my voice was supposed to remind her of the reason for her long-faced boys. Everyone knew the cloud we lived under. The bug that had caused Elisha’s Bear — the name some female Bible scholar, and then the world, had given the monstrous plague of 2067 — had visited three more times since then. So far the outbreaks had been away from North America, away from cities, never involving more than a few thousand males, and throwbacks at that, but who could predict when or where the next one would arrive?

  “He ain’t funny,” her cousin said, shaking off her collision with the wall. “He scared the crap out of me.”

  “Sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t. “But you woke me up. And ain’t isn’t a word.”

  “Sorry, professor, but I spend my time on the things that count — the stuff we’ll be tested on in our trials. And grammar ain’t one of ’em.”

  “Our trials ain’t until September,” I said.

  “Spoken like a true slacker,” Sunday said.

  “Before your aunt left for work,” Tia said to me, throwing her cousin a little frown, “she told us you’d show us the neighborhood. We were hoping it would happen this morning.”

  “I have a history session,” I said, “in an hour.” School was out for the summer, but history was a year-round subject, separate from the rest of the curriculum. Unlike grammar — or creative thinking — history was a major piece of our trials. Disregard the past, suffer the future, the oft-repeated saying went.

  “We know,” Tia said. “We’re registered, too.”

  “We’ll keep you company,” Sunday said.

  “I have plenty of company already.” All the time. Everywhere. My aunt. My mom. A dozen official or unofficial watchdogs.

  “But we can go with you?” Tia said.

  “If my aunt said you can, then you can. But when I’m ready to leave the house, you have to be ready, too. I don’t like being late.”

  “We’re set to go,” Tia said.

  “So you really do care?” Sunday asked me.

  “I have to,” I said. Passing the trials was important to me — at least the practical me — because it would keep my options open. If I decided to stay within the confines of PAC-dictated society once I got to be an adult, I’d have educational, career, and citizenship opportunities (like voting, for instance) not available to people — guys, especially — who didn’t make the grade.

  We took off on our bikes for the Learning Center, which was located on the Seattle waterfront. I pedaled hard, keeping to the wide but busy bike trail at first but weaving in and out of car and bus traffic, attracting the usual stares, glares, and honks, once we left the trail downtown. I thought Sunday and Tia might show their nerves in big-city traffic, but they looked comfortable on their tandem, Tia doing the steering, like one well-oiled four-legged machine, like they’d been riding together forever, and they stayed on my tail. They had some incentive — they didn’t want to get lost.

  They pulled up closer. “Why do you have to?” Sunday yelled over the traffic noise, but I didn’t follow her question.

  “Care,” she said. “Why do you have to care?”

  “For myself,” I yelled back at her. “And my mom expects it. If I don’t ace my trials it’ll damage her hard-earned PAC image. And there’s pressure from my aunt Paige, too. But she’s thinking more of me. She wants me to be a doctor.”

  “Do you?” Tia said. “Want to be a doctor, I mean?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “It’s one thing PAC allows us guys to do.”

  “I’m gonna be a doctor, too,” Sunday said. “A vet, though. No crap from people. Lots of gratitude from the patients.”

  “Environmental science,” Tia said. “The oceans, maybe.”

  I wondered for a moment if that job was on the guy-approved list. I actually had my eye on something else, though — a different job, a different life. But unless I wanted to attract dark looks and more “visits,” I couldn’t mention it to either Mom or Aunt Paige — or anyone, really. I couldn’t talk about leaving all this “civilized” stuff behind, taking off for the hinterlands, trying out the loner life, being like my dad. Working with him.

  Experiencing freedom.

  A small blue car, a neglected-looking Lectra-Cell, passed uncomfortably and probably intentionally too close to me. From under its hood rumbled the simulated sound of an old, barely muffled internal combustion engine. Most vehicles on the road, powered by some form of noiseless electric motor, were equipped with collision-avoidance sound systems designed to let people know they were nearby. Sometimes, instead of fake engine sounds, cars broadcast music, crowd noises, nature recordings, a medley of assorted stuff.

  In the crowded traffic we were in now, instead of distinctive sounds, I heard a jumble of noise, loud and obnoxious enough to cause an instant headache and a longing for solitude.

  For the hinterlands.

  But it wasn’t loud enough for Sunday and Tia. Just to annoy me — I was 99 percent sure — they turned on their own sound effects, jangly-clangly ice-cream-vendor music and some guy singing an antique song about a bicycle built for two.

  My bike wasn’t equipped to produce fake noise. I liked it that way.

  We arrived at the center, a glass-faced thirty-story building that was once — pre-Elisha (PE) — crammed top to bottom with law offices. In the lobby, I headed for The Groundskeeper, an espresso stand run by a girl named Petey. She’d failed her trials three years earlier but planned on trying again in another year. She’d asked me more than once if I wanted to study with her, but I’d been putting her off. I thought a boy-crush was involved in her offer, and I’d already had my bittersweet experience with an older girl.

  She raised her head at our approach. Her cool day-of-the-week sunglasses were in the shape of fat Ws. “Company today, Kellen?” she said. She had a hoarse, sexy voice, the remnant of an infection she’d suffered as a little girl. That same infection robbed her of her eyesight, but she seemed to do okay without it. Effortlessly, she began putting together my mocha — whole milk, extra shots, extra chocolate, extra hot.

  I introduced her to Sunday and Tia. Petey’s blindness wasn’t obvious, and I wondered if they noticed. When she finished with my drink she stepped out from behind the counter to hand it to me up close. She held on to the tall paper cup even after I had my fingers wrapped firmly around it, touching hers, and she leaned nearer. Her nose practically brushed my shirt while she inhaled deeply, as if walking up and sucking in someone’s scent was the most natural thing in the world. As if we were two dogs meeting in the park. Then she leaned back and let go of my coffee and smiled. “Don’t you just love the smell of this boy, girls?” she said.

  I no longer wondered if Petey’s blindness had gone unnoticed.

  Tia and Sunday exchanged an amused look. They followed me to the elevator and
we rode it to the seventh floor, where our classroom overlooked Puget Sound, blue and sparkling in the morning sun. Through tall windows we could see fishing boats moving north and south, ferries east and west. I could tell the girls were impressed, although Sunday pretended not to be.

  They found their desks, a couple of previously vacant ones next to mine, with shiny-new SUNDAY and SEPTIEMBRE — Tia’s given name — labels taped to the top surfaces. By design, I was surrounded by girls. There was one other boy in the class, a long-faced guy named Ernie, but he sat far away, inside a triple picket fence of more girls.

  Ernie and I didn’t talk much. Anxious over his upcoming trials, he spent most of his time studying and the balance of it worrying. Like the rest of us, he’d have to wait another four years to undergo a more difficult battery of tests if he flunked the first time around. Like the rest of the boys, he was facing longer odds to begin with. In an average year, 87 percent of girls passed their trials. For boys, the number was 72 percent. And it was no secret that the difference was accounted for by the scores in the oral exams. Women gave them. Women scored them. Boys floundered.

  And then there was the whole aftermath thing, even if you passed. For girls, the career choices were limitless. For boys, they were pared down and capped and dead-ended. Thus, Ernie’s chewed-down fingernails and chewed-up pencils and long face.

  Despite Mom’s continual fretting, I tried not to worry. Aunt Paige said she had confidence in me. She said the questions were common sense, and I was a sensible kid. If she wasn’t worried, why should I be? I listened (usually) while I was in class, I took notes, I remembered some of the stuff — the big stuff, anyway — I read and studied archives on the Net and watched movies and looked around a lot, at what was and what used to be.