91

Kumash County, Eastern Washington

Mitch awoke from a sound and dreamless sleep and sat up in bed, listening. “What?” he murmured.

Kaye lay beside him, motionless, snoring softly. He looked across the bed to Stella’s small shelf bolted against the wall, and the battery-powered clock that sat there, its hands glowing green in the dark. It was two-fifteen in the morning.

Without thinking, he pushed down to the end of the bed and stood, naked except for his boxers, rubbing his eyes. He could have sworn somebody had said something, but the house was quiet. Then his heart started to race and he felt alarm pump through his arms and legs. He looked over his shoulder at Kaye, thought about waking her, and decided against it.

Mitch knew he was going to check the house, make sure it was secure, prove to himself that nobody was walking around outside, preparing to lay an ambush. He knew this without thinking much about it, and he prepared by grabbing a piece of steel rebar he had stashed under the bed for just such an eventuality. He had never owned a gun, did not know how to use one, and wondered as he walked into the living room whether that was stupid.

 He shivered in the cold. The weather was turning cloudy; he could not see any stars through the window over the couch. He stumbled on a diaper pail in the bathroom. Then, abruptly, he knew he had been summoned from inside the house.

He returned to the bedroom. Half in, half out of the shallow closet at the end of the bed, on Kaye’s side, the baby’s bassinet seemed somehow outlined in the dark.

His eyes were growing more accustomed to the dark, but he was not sensing the bassinet with his eyes. He sniffed; his nose was running. He sniffed again and leaned over the bassinet, then recoiled and sneezed loudly.

“What is it?” Kaye sat up in bed. “Mitch?”

“I don’t know,” Mitch said.

“Did you ask for me?”

“No.”

“Did Stella?”

“She’s quiet. I think she’s asleep.”

“Turn on the light.”

That seemed sensible. He switched on the overhead light. Stella looked up at him from the bassinet, tawny eyes wide, her hands forming little fists. Her lips were parted, giving her a babyish, pouting Marilyn Monroe aspect, but she was silent.

Kaye crawled to the end of the bed and looked down at their daughter.

Stella made a small coo. Her eyes tracked them intently, going in and out of focus and sometimes crossing, as was her way. Still, it was obvious she was seeing them, and that she was not unhappy.

“She’s lonely,” Kaye said. “I fed her an hour ago.”

“So what is she, psychic?” Mitch asked, stretching. “Calling us with her mind?” He sniffed again, and again he sneezed. The bedroom window was closed. “What is it in here?”

Kaye squatted before the bassinet and picked up Stella.

 She nuzzled her and then looked up at Mitch, her lips drawn back in an almost feral snarl. She sneezed, too.

Stella cooed again.

“I think she has colic,” Kaye said. “Smell her.”

Mitch took Stella from Kaye. The baby squirmed and looked up at him, brows wrinkled. Mitch could have sworn she became brighter, and that someone was calling his name, either in the room or outside. Now he was really spooked.

“Maybe she is out of Star Trek,” he said. He sniffed her again and his lips curled.

“Right,” Kaye said skeptically. “She isn’t psychic.” Kaye took the baby, who was waving her fists, quite happy with the commotion, and carried her into the kitchen.

“Humans aren’t supposed to have them, but a few years ago, scientists found that we do.”

“Have what?” Mitch asked.

“Active vomeronasal organs. At the base of the nasal cavity. They process certain molecules...vomerophrins. Like pheromones. My guess is, ours just got a whole lot better.” She hefted the baby on her hips. “Your lips drawing back—”

“You did it, too,” Mitch said defensively.

“That’s a vomeronasal response. Our family cat used to do that when she smelled something really interesting—a dead mouse or my mother’s armpit.” Kaye lifted the baby, who squealed softly, and sniffed at her head, her neck, her tummy. She sniffed behind the baby’s ears again. “Sniff here,” she said.

Mitch sniffed, drew back, stifled a sneeze. He delicately felt behind Stella’s ears. She stiffened and started to be unhappy, giving little pre-crying gurks. “No,” she said quite distinctly. “No.”

Kaye loosed her bra and gave Stella suck before she became really upset.

Mitch withdrew his finger. The tip was slightly oily, as if he had touched behind the ear of a teenager, not a baby. But the oil was not precisely skin oil. It felt waxy and a little rough as he rubbed, and it smelled like musk.

“Pheromones,” he said. “Or what did you call them?” “Vomeropherins. Baby-type come-hither. We have a lot to learn,” Kaye said sleepily as she carried Stella into the bedroom and lay down with her. “You woke up first,” Kaye murmured. “You always had a good nose. Good night.”

Mitch felt behind his own ears and sniffed his finger. Abruptly, he sneezed again, and stood at the end of the bed, wide awake, his nose and palate tingling.

It was no more than an hour after he managed to get back to sleep that he came awake again and jumped out of bed and instantly started slipping on his pants. It was still dark. He tapped Kaye’s foot with his hand.

“Trucks,” he said. He had just finished buttoning the front of his shirt when someone banged on the front door. Kaye pushed Stella to the middle of the bed and quickly put on slacks and a sweater.

Mitch opened the front door with his shirt cuffs still undone. Jack stood on the porch, his lips forming a hard, upside-down U, his hat pulled low, almost hiding his eyes. “Sue’s gone into labor,” he said. “I’ve got to go back to the clinic.”

“We’ll be right down,” Mitch said. “Is Galbreath there?”

“She won’t be coming. You should get out of here now. The trustees voted last night while I was with Sue.”

“How—” Mitch began, and then saw the three trucks and seven men on the gravel and dirt of the front yard.

“They decided the babies are sick,” Jack said miserably. “They want them taken care of by the government.”

“They want their damned jobs back,” Mitch said.

“They won’t talk to me.” Jack touched his mask with a strong, thick finger. “I persuaded the trustees to let you go. I can’t go with you, but these men will take you up a dirt road to the highway.” Jack held out his hands helplessly. “Sue wanted Kaye to be with her. I wish you could be there. But I gotta go.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said.

Kaye came up behind him, carrying the baby in the car seat. “I’m ready,” she said. “I want to go see Sue.”

“No,” Jack said. “It’s that old Cayuse woman. We should have sent her to the coast.”

“It’s more than her,” Mitch said.

“Sue needs me!” Kaye cried.

“They won’t let you into that part of town,” Jack said miserably. “Too many people. They heard it on the news—dead Mexicans near San Diego. No way. It’s hard, like stone, what they think now. They’ll go after us next, probably.”

Kaye wiped her eyes in anger and frustration. “Tell her we love her,” she said. “Thanks for everything, Jack. Tell her.”

“I will. I gotta go.”

The seven men backed away as Jack walked to his truck and got in. He started the engine and spun out, throwing a plume of dust and gravel.

“The Toyota’s in better shape,” Mitch said. He hefted their two suitcases to the trunk under the watchful eyes of the seven men. They muttered to each other and stayed well clear as Kaye carried Stella out in her arms and fastened her into the car seat in the back. Some of the men avoided her eyes and made small signs with their hands. She slid in beside the baby.

Two of the pickups had gun racks and shotguns and hunting rifles. Her throat closed as she settled into the back of the Toyota beside Stella. She rolled up the window and buckled her seat belt and sat with the meaty sour smell of her own fear.

Mitch carried out her laptop and box of papers and pushed them into the back of the trunk, then slammed the lid. Kaye was pushing buttons on her cell phone.

“Don’t do that,” Mitch said gruffly as he got into the driver’s seat. “They’ll know where we are. We’ll call from a pay phone someplace when we’re on the highway.”

 Kaye’s dapples flared red for an instant.

Mitch watched her with a stricken, wondering face. “We’re aliens,” he muttered. He started the engine. The seven men got into the three trucks and led them down the road.

“You have any cash for gas?” Mitch asked.

“In my purse,” Kaye said. “You don’t want to use credit cards?”

Mitch avoided answering that. “We got almost a full tank.”

Stella squalled briefly, then grew quiet as a pink dawn started over the low hills and behind the scattered oak trees. The overcast lay open and ragged on the horizon and they saw curtains of rain ahead. The dawn light was bright and unreal against the low black clouds.

The dirt road north was rough but not impassable. The trucks accompanied them to the very end, where a sign marked the edge of the reservation and also, coincidentally, advertised the Wild Eagle Casino. Scrub and tumbleweeds lay sad and battered against a bent and twisted barbed wire fence.

The thick underbellies of the clouds drizzled light rain on the windshield, turning the dust into wiper-whipped mud as they came off the dirt road, up an embankment, and onto the state highway heading east. A brilliant shaft of morning light, the last they saw that day, caught them like a searchlight as Mitch brought the Toyota up to speed on the two-lane asphalt.

“I liked that place,” Kaye said, her voice rough. “I was happier in that trailer than I can remember ever being, anywhere else in my life.”

“You thrive in adversity,” Mitch said, and reached over his shoulder to grasp her hand.

“I thrive with you,” Kaye said. “With Stella.”