Firechild Read Free Page B

dreadfully wrong, but I’m about to set it right.’
    “He wouldn’t say what he meant. Just kissed me and rushed off.” Trouble dulled her voice. “Last night he never came home. Never even called. I tried the lab a dozen times. The switchboard girl always said his line was busy. I wondered if he just had no time to talk. Anyhow, I was worried so much I nearly never got to sleep last night.”
    “Neither did I,” he told her. “If you reach him, tell him I’m on my way to Enfield.
    “If I can—” She hesitated. “I’d better warn you that lab security has got awfully tight. I’ve never been inside. Once he promised to show me around, but security wouldn’t let me in.”
    “I’m driving. I’ll be there tonight.”
    “If we could get him out of EnGene—” A longer pause. “I’m sick about it, but he’s a stubborn man.”
    “I remember that.”
    Driving hard all that long midsummer day through fields of tall green corn and golden wheat and fat cattle grazing, he had time to think of the boy Vic had been. The arrogant oddball. Victor—he wanted people to use his full name because he said it meant winner, but nobody did.
    The scrawny little kid, always wanting too much, somehow often winning it. Grimly taking on bullies too big for him, projects too hard for him, begging for books too old for him. Reading them too late by a flashlight under a blanket in spite of his myopia. Always trying to build things his allowance wouldn’t buy: a steam engine and a microscope and finally his own computer. Sometimes they worked.
    Vic had always surprised him. He kept recalling their last night together, the night of moody silences and solemn recollections after their father’s funeral. They sat up late in the Cincinnati hotel room. He was sipping bourbon and water, which Vic refused.
    “I’ve got a fine brain. I want to keep it running.”
    He set his own drink aside.
    “A damn shame.” He knew Vic was thinking of their father. “After all he’d done—done for others—” His voice had broken. He gulped and went on. “But I guess he knew what was coming. I remember how he used to quote what he called the first and second laws of medicine. We’re machines. Machines wear out.”
    He nodded, recalling the reek of the pipe and the rasp of the rusty old voice and medical smells that always filled the front room where the old man met his patients.
    “Life—it isn’t fair!” Vic’s voice quivered. “He died too hard!”
    A bitter silence. He reached for his drink.
    “Too hard!” Vic paused and slowly brightened.
    “Someday we’ll do better.” He sat abruptly straighter, as if his grief had lifted. “I never liked those two laws. I always felt that we’re more than just machines—I know Dad was. I never wanted to wear out. And Sax, you know, perhaps—”
    Vic’s voice changed.
    “I hate to say this, Sax. Because of Dad. But I’m getting out of medicine. I never had your bent for it. Or his, though I never told him. I guess I’m—well, maybe just too restless. I never had Dad’s total dedication. Now that he’s gone, I’m giving it up.”
    “For what?”
    “Genetics.”
    “Why genetics?”
    “It’s where we’ll build the future.” Vic’s eyes shone behind the heavy lenses. “Here’s what I mean. An idea I’ve been incubating ever since I first began to see what’s possible. Dad would have called it a crazy dream. But listen!”
    He listened, a little awed by Vic as he had always been.
    “The genetic engineers are redesigning life. Give them a few more years, and they’ll be able to create nearly anything.”
    “Supermen?”
    “Could be.” Vic shrugged. “But let’s look first at something simpler. For example, microorganisms.”
    “Genetic weapons?”
    “I hope not!” Vic looked hurt. “A lot of bugs are bad, but others are benign. You’ve got benign symbiotes in your own gut, Sax. Suppose we could create a better symbiote.”
    “Like what?”
    “Call it a virus of