COSMOS magazine

Monday, June 30

As far as Dr. Betsy O'Reilly's assistant knew, it had just been a routine exam. Betsy took them into an inner office, closed the door. "Well, looks like y'all get a clean bill of health. The MRI scans don't show anything unusual in any of you."

Unable to believe what she was hearing, Jill said: "What about Alex's tumour?"

"There's a small abnormality in the frontal region. Since I have no previous scans to compare it with, I can't say much about it."

"Small? How small?" Jill found herself grinning at Paul, hardly daring to hope but filled with hope anyway.

"Under three millimetres. About the size of the pellet you use in a BB gun."

"I knew it!" It took all Jill's willpower to keep from jumping up and down like an excited child. "He was only over at Keith's house for three days this time, but I could see the difference when he came back home. How can it possibly be working this fast?"

Betsy said, "I have to admit I'm amazed myself. But a tumour is an aberration. The auxosomal repair mechanisms obviously have an antiangiogenic—" She paused. "They've cut off its blood supply and begun to tear down the messed up cells. What concerns me more is the excess growth of healthy brain tissue and synaptic connections. Repairs are one thing, re-optimising a human body is quite another." She gazed frankly from Paul to Jill. "I hope to hell you know what you've let yourselves in for. This could be the breakthrough of the new century—or it could be lethal."

Monday, June 30

"Who wants to go first?" Paul set down the tray with its three hypodermic syringes, each loaded with a precise bolus of regulator proteins.

"I will." Alex stepped forward. "I'm not scared any more." He looked away as Paul slid the needle under his skin, grimaced but did not cry out.

"My turn." Jill felt buoyant with hope. Alex would stay at Keith's house for at least another week. He'd be safe there from Wayne. Once Jill got another job, life could go back to normal for them both. No, much better than before, with her new love as part of their lives.

Paul was glancing toward the door. "You know, I can't help thinking about Crazy Payback. I wonder where he is, how he's doing. Wish there was some way we could get hold of him."

"Surely you wouldn't be willing to help him after—"

"He may be an entirely different person now from the madman we saw two weeks ago. Besides, the kind of torture he'll go through if he doesn't get the regulator injections... I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

Monday, June 30

Patience, his father always said, is one of the primary virtues of a hunter. That gift had never come naturally to Wayne. Another day squandered watching Jill's house had him squirming with frustration. Time to try a more direct approach.

He walked down the street and crossed well to the south of the house, ankles hurting in these stupid women's shoes, prepared to break into the house and take both Jill and Alex hostage if necessary. Let's see about getting in through a window. Certainly looked possible. No dog in the yard, and if he was lucky, no alarm system. The house wasn't exactly low rent, but it didn't look as if it'd been outfitted with anything elaborate. Still, after his earlier attack in the lab, maybe they'd have stepped up precautions. Probably not. She was sleeping somewhere else, wouldn't have seen a need to do anything special here.

He was passing by on the sidewalk for a closer look when she showed up with some guy in a pickup truck. Not that scientist Gibson, either... Bitch must be putting out on the side. That made Wayne feel better about what he might have to do to her, but damn! This guy's presence was definitely a complication. Wayne drifted back over to the apartment complex to wait it out some more.

Not more than five minutes later, another guy came running up. Paul Gibson. Uh oh! Gonna be trouble now. Wayne waited, expecting at any moment to hear shouts, maybe gunfire. But no, in a few minutes, out comes the first guy, hauls a ladder from the pickup, leans it up against the house and starts scraping paint. Hired help, okay. He kept this up until it was almost dark; then he got into the truck and drove away. Jill and Gibson were still inside the house.

For a moment Wayne considered grabbing Gibson, but no, way too risky doing something like that right out in the open. Besides, Paul Gibson seemed like the type of guy who wouldn't give in all that easy just because the gun was aimed at his own head, look at the way he'd behaved last time. The kid was the one to grab, wherever the hell he was. Well, maybe he didn't need the kid. Maybe Jill would do.

He hid himself in the shadow of a large, untrimmed shrub, waited for what seemed hours. Finally the light went off in the front room. Desperation drove him. They must be going to bed. If it had been him, he would've been all on top of the foxy— He broke off, angry at himself. Unfaithful to Fern and the sacred memory of Melody, and anyway it just wasn't true. His mind, he was coming to realize, swarmed with these stupid tags of macho, jock bluster, as if his very thoughts had been infected over the years. It made him want to squeeze his head with his hands until his skull cracked.

Pull yourself together, man, he chided himself. Keeping to the shadows, he moved closer, slowly and precisely, until he was only a few feet from the wall of the house.

A faint glow came from one of the windows. A night light probably. A stuffed giraffe and a toy robot perched on the window sill. Good choice. Since the kid wasn't there, no one was likely to come into that room. It would make a hiding place. He pulled his flashlight from his pocket and examined the edges of the window. No sign of an alarm system. With a sharp, tearing noise, Wayne slit the screen vertically with his pocket knife.

Monday, June 3

Amid a clutter of boxes and kitchenware, Jill plopped down on a stool and sighed. "I sort of wish I'd thrown in the furniture and kitchenware as part of the sale. I'd forgotten how much trouble it is to move. Don't think I could've done it without your help, Paul."

"We're almost done in here. What do you say we take a break for a few minutes?"

"Love to. Let's sit outside."

The backyard was still the same, a segment of the past preserved for one last moment. Jill sat on the picnic bench, relaxing for the first time since the gunman's intrusion in their lives. Alex was getting better, and seemed happy enough staying for a few days with his dad. The financial wolf had been driven away, at least temporarily, from the door. And Paul was here with her. She stretched her arms above her head, trying to relieve muscles that ached from lifting furniture and boxes. "You know what I'd like more than anything right now? A back massage."

"That can be arranged, but you need to lie down for the full effect." Paul ran his hands over her shoulders. "Too bad we can't bring the couch out here."

Wincing as he kneaded her tight neck muscles, Jill sighed. "There's an exercise mat."

"Perfect. What is that incredible fragrance?"

"Jasmine. The vine with the white flowers over on the fence. Isn't it wonderful? I thought it was lovely before, but it's ten times better now. Have scents been different for you? Since the auxosomes?"

"Yeah, way more complex. The jasmine, for example—it's not just sweet, there's a sort of... I dunno, tart aspect."

"Yes!" Jill agreed enthusiastically. "Everything has more depth. Before, I was just looking at pencil sketches of the world. Suddenly I see everything in three dimensions and living colour." She fell silent, surprised by what she found herself saying. "Gosh, that really is true, you know. These past couple of weeks I've been so upset I haven't really stopped to notice it until just now."

"Wait'll you have a chance to listen to music. Not just wallpaper background—really listen."

"Oh, yes!" In her mind's ear, Bach spoke complex melody. "Maybe we should go inside and put on a CD."

"In a little while. Let's just relax here for a few minutes."

She stretched out on her stomach, eyes closed.

"Have you weighed yourself lately, Jill?" Paul ran his hands easily under her jeans. "You're getting skinny."

"No scale at your place," she mumbled. "Now that you mention it, the zipper seems to go up a lot easier these days."

"And down, luckily."

The neighbour's air conditioner fan came on, and in the low hum she identified a fugue of separate frequencies reflected in the motion of Paul's hands, moving from muscle to muscle on her shoulders, arms, lower back, like water flowing over and around her. The cycle of water: liquid, gas, liquid. The cycle of the universe... what had Paul said?... forever expanding. Forever undergoing creation, she thought.

While she could clearly distinguish where her body ended and his began, it was fascinating to realize that the motion of his hands somehow followed the rhythm of her own body, as the rhythm of Alex's body had followed hers when he was a tiny seal swimming in her miniature sea.

She drifted, almost fainting in the joy of it.

Monday, June 30

Wayne waited quietly for a moment, afraid they'd hear him if he made any more noise. After a while, he got his nerve back again. Knife positioned to make the horizontal slit that would allow him to open the screen fully, push up the window, and step into the room, his hand jerked as a kind of wail came from the rear of the house. Animal? No, definitely human. What the hell now?

Slowly, taking care to slide his clumsy shoes to avoid stepping on a fallen tree branch, Wayne eased along the side of the house. A rickety wooden fence stopped him; he probed it carefully to see if he could climb it, maybe get in through the back door instead. It creaked ominously. Leaning against the house, straining to see through the darkness, focused on the sound of breathless laughter, he finally made out two pale naked bodies moving slowly together on some sort of pallet on the ground.

A woman's voice, between gasps: "It's never been like this for me." Definitely her voice.

"Me either. Not even close."

More laughter and rolling around. Wayne wished it wasn't quite so dark.

"I think we're starting to process more sensory inputs simultaneously," the man said. Now Wayne recognized Paul Gibson's voice.

"I wonder if pain would be more intense too?" The woman sat up, and a shaft of light from the house fell on her breasts, her curly brown hair. Jill Shannon, yes, but she looked slimmer than in the lab.

"The potential'd be there, but maybe we'll be able to distract ourselves from it."

"Like my contraction pains when Alex was born... Want me to give you a hard pinch, check your theory, Einstein?"

"Actually, to my certain knowledge, Einstein never published in the pain physiology journals. You mean Hilgard."

"Who's he?"

"He and she, actually. Experts in hypnosis and pain control."

"Is there no end to your mysterious Antipodean wisdom? Ouch. Hey!"

"It didn't work, then?"

"I was distracted. Oh god, that feels good. No, don't stop." More laughter.

Half-watching, half-abashed, Wayne hesitated before going back to the bedroom window. Something long-buried was surfacing from his memory. His wedding night with Melody. Although they'd Done It several times before, that had always been furtive, rushed and tinged with fear of pregnancy and disgrace. Being joined together as husband and wife, with the community's blessing, took some of the thrill away, but knowing that he and this wonderful woman were bound together for life had brought him, in an explosive release of emotion, into a greater intimacy than he'd ever felt before with another human. He had pressed his face into her shoulder and wept. That should have been excruciatingly embarrassing. Somehow, with Melody, it was okay; it brought them even closer together. He had never allowed that sort of intimacy between himself and Fern.

Blinded by sudden tears, Wayne took a step backward, stumbled, grabbed the fence to keep from falling. It made very little noise, but Jill turned her head.

"What was that? Something over by the fence."

"I'll check."

Shit! Paul, naked, approaching the fence. Wayne crouched low, held his breath.

"Can't see anything."

"Miz Kitty maybe. The next-door neighbours have been taking care of her for us, asked if they could adopt her. But she keeps coming back here. I'm jumpy lately." Holding her jeans in front of her, Jill had joined Paul by the fence. "Let's go in and make some tea."

Wayne could hear them with total clarity as they paused for a passionate kiss. He could smell them; his dick swelled against his pants, but he remained absolutely still until he heard them walk away across the grass, heard the back door close behind them. He rose, then, and made his way uncomfortably back to the kid's window.