Part Five: Scrambling

Then. Oh, then. Something happened which threw off all my plans. A catastrophe.

Edward died long before I was ready.

The directorship families were economizing after the Big Bail-Out of A.L.-Bion, the Genet-Yorks especially, but one luxury Edward kept was his box at the stadium. Eight weeks ago, on a Sunday, he took all four boys, the two from Elyse's first marriage, Mike and Thomas, and the two they had together, Edward jr., and Richard, to see a play-off game. Their daughters, Elyse jr., who's called Ellie, and Cecy, were with their mother, at home. Ironically, he had done it partly at my suggestion that he should spend more time with his children.

The stadium was fairly new, only about a year old. It was state of the art, and all of that. But it had been built on a piece of land which had an underground network of caves. While normally the caves were full of water, this had been a very dry year. As the water dropped and the caves emptied, the stadium got to be too heavy for the ground to bear its weight.

The entire east half of the stadium collapsed, and part of the west went with it. Ed's box was directly on the east side of the fifty-meter line.

Ed was killed. Elyse's oldest son, Michael, was fatally injured and died on the way to the hospital. Ed jr. and Rick were both critically injured. Elyse's second son, Tom, escaped unharmed, because he had been in the extreme western part of the building talking to a girl.

It was hours before we knew that, though. You can imagine what the disaster site was like. Hundreds dead, thousands injured. It was awful.

I went to identify my brother's body, some thirty odd hours after the collapse. Elyse, my mother, and Daenne all were at the hospital with the boys. The living take precedence over the dead and the children over the father. The way of the world.

He wasn't in the morgue, where I would have looked at him on a digital screen many rooms and floors removed, but in a temporary cold pavilion set up in the stadium parking garage. A medic from the police department took me to a long stretcher table, slit the sterile grey foam cocoon with a heat knife, and peeled the soft wadding away from Edward's face. I nodded, took out my Powermod, called up Ed's genetic profile, and handed it to her. She took an instrument from her belt, touched it to his cheek, and his pattern bloomed in light on its small screen.

She compared the two. "I'm sorry," she said. "Would you like a moment?"

"Yes," I said. She went off to find someone else's dead, and I tried to sort out

my thoughts. I couldn't work up much anger at him, even though he'd died far too prematurely for my plans. I wasn't especially grieved, either. I felt worse about Michael, poor kid. He and I weren't that close, not like some of my other nieces and nephews, but he'd asked for my advice on academic matters. We had gone over his college applications only the week before. I was going to miss him a hell of a lot.

Ed had been so much older than I, almost eleven years older, that our worlds hadn't really overlapped until I came back home. I had wanted everything he had simply because he had it, but what had he had, in the end?

The executive directorship of a company in trouble, a brother who had stolen from him, and an unhappy wife. He had screwed a lot of women who meant nothing to him once he'd put it back in his pants, and fathered ten children, five of whom got no more of him than half their genes and some of his money. The other five got only a little more than that. He came into the world healthy and whole, and he had been good-looking. When he had learned his life was endangered by heart disease, he had not recanted his Imagism and sought treatment. He had wanted to die young. I didn't.

I was going to have more than he had. I was going to have the executive directorship and do things he never dreamt of. Daenne was unhappy, but that marriage was about to end, and then there would be Primavera. I wanted her even as I wanted the directorship, as I had wanted a healthy, normal body, as I have always wanted anything I was determined to have. If there were any children, they would be hers and mine, no others, and I would miss nothing of their lives. Ed had been idle. He had been shallow. He had been hedonistic; he had sought and found his pleasures but mislaid his happiness. I had hated him because I could not be him. Now that I could be him, I was not going to be anything like him.

His death had left more space in the world for me, though, and if I were to get the Executive Directorship, I was going to have to hustle. As I went over to the hospital to pick Daenne up, I thought over my possible strategies and analyzed my chances. The CFO—me, in this case—becomes acting ED if the current Executive Director dies or is otherwise incapacitated.

The directors have eight weeks to pick a new ED, and the ED must be from a directorship family. Any adult can apply; then they have to convince the directors to vote for them. They have to make a formal presentation of their qualifications and plans for the future of A.L.-Bion at some point during that time. Informally, a lot of conniving, bargaining, bribery, and blackmail goes on as well. The final event before the vote is a very formal party on the eighth Friday night, thrown by A.L.-Bion for the directorship families, during which all the candidates make a last effort to win support where they can, and then on Monday, after a weekend to sober up and generally recover, the directors vote, and the majority rules.

For those eight weeks, I would be acting as ED. It was up to me to find enough support. I ran over the current directors in my mind. Most of them were of my parents' generation, and hard-line Imagists. That was a stroke against me, the heretic proponent of and living tribute to the skills of modern medicine and surgery.

Ed's death also left the Genet-York directorship open. My mother held the Neville proxy; therefore she was ineligible for our family's vote as well. Elyse wasn't likely to want to exercise it anytime soon, and George was in prison. That left only one adult Genet-York other than me: Edward's now thirty-year-old premarital son Steven, the doctor in Uganda. He wasn't very interested in A.L.-Bion as anything other than a source of donations for his clinic. I'm one of his major contributors, have been for years. He's a smart guy. We share a special bond, both being family embarrassments and non-Imagists. The Genet-York directorship would be mine, whether I got the ED or not.

I had to consider the directors carefully. I already mentioned the major points against me: I am not Imagist, and I not only approve of surgery, but I had a lot of it done. But I had some advantages, also. They respected my abilities, my honesty, and my work ethics. I made sure they knew what role Norfolk, Lovell and Radcliffe played in my successes—my crew was another point in my favor.

It was not enough. I needed a hole card, and as I drove I realized what, or who, it had to be. Doctor Primavera Visconti, XD, Nobel Prize nominee, the famous and wealthy daughter of a famous man. Without her, I was building on thin ice with brittle glass. It made a mess of my plan to make amends with the Head of Science position. Plus, the timing was bad in another way. I was still married to Daenne.

I would have to get Primavera signed on, and fast, if I was to get the Executive Directorship. And I was going to have to be honest and open about it if I wanted to keep her friendship, let alone marry her. It made it so much more difficult for me. If I attempted to make her a tool, she would sooner or later find that out. It was damned inconvenient that I loved her.

I had gotten over resenting it, though.

Speaking of marriage and Daenne, when I got to the hospital and went up to the floor where my nephews' room was, I got a break. I overheard a conversation between Daenne and Elyse as they sat in the visitor's lounge. I will summarize it. She delivered a long and detailed account of what she disliked about being married to me. The name 'Frankenstein' was used. She made it clear that she had never been able to set aside the memory of what I had been, and that she should never had married me to begin with. It wasn't a huge shock.

Daenne ended her litany with, "And the worst of it is, he will never, not ever, let me go. It isn't as if he was in love with me—not the real me— but the idea of me he got back when we were home-schooled together. I never thought I would say this about my second marriage, I thought it would be forever. But I thought that the first time, too. I want a divorce! I want to be free."

Could I have gotten a better cue? I stepped into the lounge, and Daenne jumped in her seat. "Richard!"

"I just caught the end of that." I said. "And if that's what you want, you shall have it. You're right—and that dream was too much to base a life on. I'm prepared to be generous above and beyond the pre-nup; I wouldn't want you to worry. Radcliffe will handle my side of it. Perhaps Elyse has a friend who can recommend a divorce lawyer for you? I'll move out tonight. You can keep the condominium and most of the furniture as part of the settlement. I'll just stay a few minutes to see the boys, and then I'll go get my things together." I was sad and heavy outwardly, of course, but I was grinning underneath.

Both Eddie and Rick were out of it still, which was for the best as they were both…pretty badly messed up. Their lives weren't in any danger, but I had a strong premonition of what would follow as Elyse and her Imagism conflicted with common sense and the hospital.

If I had favorites among my nieces and nephews, Rick would be one of them. He wasn't named for me, but for my grandfather, his great-granddad, who had been a sharp old guy. It was as if the name had imparted the genes for wits along with it; Rick was bright, even as I was, and I liked our interchanges. Eddie was a lot like Ed, but I had taught him the fundaments of reasoning over the years, and I thought he would do better than his father had.

It's sad, but I knew all of my brothers' children better than their fathers did. Perhaps even better than their mothers. I paid them more attention. I spent more time on them, what with studying them, observing them, writing, cliking, calling and talking to them, thinking of what to get them for their birthdays, than their fathers did.

I had come to care for them, more deeply than I ever thought I would. It had started out as a way for me to show my continuing interest and involvement in the family in general; then it had turned into a game of one-upmanship and power, when I realized what effect it had on them all. Now it seemed a tragedy, with Edward dead, George in jail, and Isabelle fled. More inconvenient attachments. I had to sever some of them, somewhereLove is bad for business

The first week after Edward's death passed by quickly. I moved back into the executive apartment complex I lived in when I first moved back home. I spent a lot of time and energy keeping A.L.-Bion going, and told my desire to become the Executive Director to Primavera, who was having troubles of her own down in Australia. They were getting the rain we weren't; areas which had been desert for thousands of years were getting rainfall like Seattle, and it was causing problems, such as mudslides.

On Thursday, there were the funerals for Edward and Michael. It was a good opportunity to look over the directors, as all of them—indeed, almost every member of the Directorship families—attended. Imagism is a conservative creed and the Directorship families conservative by nature. The funeral was awash with somber colors.

Black is too chic, these days, for mourning others' lives, or so I gather. I saw forest green, maroon, navy blue, beige, deep brown, purple, white, and just about every shade of grey, but no black. I myself wore a charcoal grey suit, with a medium grey shirt and a tone-on-tone grey tie. Monochrome works.

The one exception to all this visible display of respect was Elyse's mother, Jacquelinette Woodhouse. She wore a cream dress and jacket with a bright teal pattern. She explained loudly from time to time that at her age, eighty-seven, she didn't like to be reminded of funerals. She said it fourteen times in my hearing. She might have done me the favor of staying away, in that case.

The minister was adequate to the occasion. I tuned her out and pondered on the lives of Ed and Michael. Stephen had come from Uganda for his father's funeral; there he stood in silence. There was a memory—I might have witnessed his conception.

I remember being five years old, awakened by some noise or other, limping down the hall to the rec room, to see where it was coming from, to find my big brother Edward doing something funny with Nyssa, who was staying with us. "What are you doing that for?" I asked. More or less nine months later, Stephen was born.

At the time, after they had gotten over their shock, Ed took me back down the hall, saying it was nothing, only don't tell Mom and Dad. I said that if it was nothing, why shouldn't I tell? And if I shouldn't tell, then I wouldn't—if he would tell me what they were doing. I liked having his attention, I didn't get it often.

So he explained sex to me. When he was done, I said, "I still don't see why you'd want to do that" That was a memory of Ed that could bring a genuine smile to my face. That was nice.

Mike had been a loud bundle of jealousy and temper when he joined our family. He'd been only two and a half, jealous of his new stepfather, his little brother, and the coming baby. He was usually in a really foul mood. One morning, he'd thrown a piece of toast at me. I threw it back. The incredulous look of shock on his face had turned to glee, as I engaged him in a food fight. What a mess! And now he was dead…I was brooding too much, I could feel my eyes beginning to sting.

I turned my thoughts to the other attendees, the people to whom I would soon be announcing my candidacy for the Executive Directorship, those I would be competing against, and those whose votes I would need.

There were only three directors under fifty, not counting Isabelle, who gave my mother the Neville proxy.

One was Bock Ingram. He had his doctorate in chemistry, and I knew he was all for expansion and change. His sister Kirby and brother McKean had been home-schooled with me. I had been cultivating his friendship for a few months now. His vote would be mine, but it would come with a price tag on it. I could find out what it read.

Another was Theodore Richmond-Stanley, of course. He had contributed as little as possible to the bail-out, and made the most noise about it. I liked him even less than I had before.

The only other youngish director was Warren Hastings, Edward's best buddy. Predictably, he was a lot like Ed. In fact, Hastings even saw one of Ed's part-time 'girlfriends' on a regular basis. Janine Shore was her name. She was a 'psychologist-counselor' for A.L.-Bion's executives. I privately thought of her as an over-priced fake in all of her professions. Hastings himself wasn't well known to me. I didn't know how he might vote.

Nor did I know who else might apply. Any of the directors might; none of them might. It was something to think about.

Radcliffe was philosophical about my separation from Daenne. "You had no business marrying her in the first place. She's a fluffy duckling. Cute, sweet, and lightweight." And then she went ahead and got everything ready. It would be up to Daenne to get her act together and fulfill her part, and then it would be over.

On the weekend, I opted to stay at Elyse's with all the kids rather than spend it in the hospital. I went there every day during the week; I didn't need to give the two boys all Saturday and Sunday when there were five other kids who were getting ignored. Besides, I had a standing date with Margali and Jonathan for the weekends.

They had their care providers, but they needed attention from somebody who wasn't getting paid for it, too. So I taught the younger ones all about papier-mâché. For that alone, I think Elyse would forever hate me, but then I compounded matters by doing what I called intervening and what she called interfering.

Her son Tom, now her oldest living child, was going into a severe depression, since Ed his stepfather and all his other brothers were hurt or dead and he hadn't a scratch on him. No hope of medication for him, given the Imagism nonsense; but he needed something, at least counseling. I did what I could, and saw that he got a therapist. She didn't like it.

There was another problem, too. My niece Ellie, Edward and Elyse's oldest, who was just fourteen and a bundle of hormones. For some reason, she chose to fixate on me. All of a sudden, she became interested in what I had gone through, asked me lots of questions, hung on me all the time, and wanted to see me with my shirt off. I am not shy, but I am cautious. I remember many cases in history where an adolescent girl went off the deep end and got carried away with what she said or did. Think of Salem and the witch hunts, or early Christianity and all those teenage girl saints. I made sure I was never alone with her, for my own safety.

I got through the weekend unscathed somehow. Monday morning, I learned who was going to be the only other serious contender for the ED: Theodore Richmond-Stanley. His much-married mother, Margaret Beaufort-Richmond-Brown-Walker-Powell-Stanley, held the Beaufort directorship; no point in wooing her vote for me. I began to think over what his qualifications were, and what plans he might have in store for A.L.-Bion. One thing was for sure; he wouldn't be bribing votes with anything that would cost him actual money. If I chose to go that route, I wouldn't have to worry about a bidding war.

I also acquired another staffer for my personal team; William Catesby, formerly Ed's personal assistant. Any personal assistant Edward had was by necessity male, as despite all the anti-harassment laws, Ed seduced every female assistant who worked under him. I mean, for him. The under part came later…Catesby was a tall, pale young guy whose physical coordination hadn't quite caught up to his growth, meaning he was still scrawny, a little clumsy, and had an Adam's-apple like a knee in his neck. He even blushed whenever an attractive woman spoke to him. He had a passion for twentieth-century popular music of all kinds, and usually had something playing softly in the background, whether it was Duke Ellington, the Beatles, or Tori Amos. He can organize like few people I've ever met.

Bock Ingram and I were doing a delicate round of negotiations for his support, and I was beginning to suspect that I wouldn't want to pay his price. He was hinting that he wanted the Head of Science post. I had not actually mentioned it to Primavera yet, but as far as I was concerned, it was hers. I wanted and needed her there in it, and it was to be my gift to her. She was by far the better qualified of the two, and besides my other reasons, I also wanted her as someone who hadn't grown up in the A.L.-Bion environment, someone with a wider perspective. Bock was too much an insider for me; there had been too many members of directorship families given important jobs for which they were unsuited or unqualified—witness George and Morton-Bishop. The post was too great a reward for just one vote.

As the second week after Ed's death continued, I had a scare which lasted three days—Primavera dropped out of any and all communications, for no apparent reason. Then I learned that the area where her ecology center was, was enduring massive rainfall, flash floods, and mudslides. Those were three horrible days. I was imagining her dead. I saw her, in my mind, buried by tons of debris, with silt clogging her lungs to the point where even the best artificials could not pull enough oxygen to preserve her life. I thought of sand grinding the corneas of her sweet dark eyes, and her voice silenced forever by mud, and I made myself ill with worry. Why must the people we love come into the world wearing such fragile bags of meat as bodies? Why not something more enduring?

When things finally became calm and she had leisure to answer, she told me that the house where she was staying had been destroyed in one of the slides, but there had been enough warning to evacuate. She and her two housemates were safe in a hotel. She had lost some of her clothes, but they rescued all the important things, such as books, keepsakes, jewelry, and one housemate's two meter boa constrictor. She had thought she lost her own pet cat, a friendly Abyssinian called Brulee, but he turned up alive and well two days later. The center she was working in might have to be abandoned also, and if it did, the project was likely to be terminated.

Once I hung up, I pondered on the workings of fate. It was as if God was trying to make up for the bad timing of Edward's death by ensuring that Primavera would be in search of a new job soon, when I had one for her.

On that Friday, things took an unexpected turn. I was visiting the hospital, and walked by Elyse out in the hallway just as she was telling off a doctor assigned to the boys. Her voice was shrill and harsh as she defended her Imagist beliefs. I was sick of Imagism several hundred times over, and sick of Elyse, and I would have just left when I recognized the doctor she was haranguing. He had been one of the army of medical professionals who worked on me throughout my transformation. His name was James Tyrell.

Suddenly, I knew. I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I arranged to meet Tyrell in the hospital parking lot later. I got there first and walked around the perimeter of it as I waited. The fringes of the lot were crumbling away, and tall weeds sprouted from the cracks. At some time in the past, two chain link fences had been installed back-to-back between that lot and the next. Stupid, pointless, and wasteful. The desiccated corpse of a small bird still seemed to writhe in pain and fear, caught with one foot pinched in the wires. The tiny vertebrae of its neck looked like beads. I felt a great sadness and sorrow for that little bird come over me. Every line of its body told how it had fought to free itself, and failed, and died. I walked away from it.

Tyrell showed up, and we went through all the usual hellos. Then I looked him straight in the eye, and asked him, "So. Exactly how strong are your principles?"

When Elyse returned to visit her sons that evening, they were both gone. No one would tell her where they were, or what had happened, or why.

I waited until the sedative they gave her took effect, and then I told her. They had to give her a second dose after that.

I had already left. I had more important things to do. Those last three hours had been full of activity and I anticipated more. Elyse was almost certainly calling in the authorities, her lawyers, and my mother.

I was prepared, however. I had put those hours to good use. I had called in an organization that was prepared to back me all the way. Even now, members were all over the hospital. I had most of my staff there, too, except for Catesby, who I had dispatched to meet the shuttle from Australia. Primavera was on it. One brief call to her was all it took to convince her to cross oceans and continents.

This was going to be a war, exactly my kind of war, and fought on my own turf. Elyse and her people were going to be outmaneuvered and outgunned. I felt I had my teeth into a throat and it tasted rich and salty. I tell you, I wanted to run through the hospital leaping and howling like a wolf.

Can you imagine what it must have been like when getting from Australia to here took over ten hours? Three hours and forty-five minutes after Primavera hung up, she was walking into my nephews' new room, and only an hour and a half of that was the actual flight.

I broke off from the story I was telling them about my own hospital stay to greet her. I hadn't known my eyes could be starved for the sight of anyone, until I looked at her then. She wasn't changed much; she had cut her hair short, chin-length. She looked a bit tired—she had been running from the mud slide only twenty-eight hours earlier.

For the last forty-five minutes or so, I had been stalling until she could get there. It hadn't been a waste. Elyse had called the police; I had called the media. Both had time to get set up. I had my own people set up a general live x-mit digital feed, so everybody on the outside could see and hear what was going on. I had a bone-conduction plug in one ear, so I could listen in on Elyse, her lawyers, and the police. Elyse wanted it treated as if it were a hostage situation. Fortunately the captain had more sense.

I had spent the time talking to the boys. They had no clue yet as to what was going on, and I meant to keep it that way until the last possible moment.

Which was at hand. Primavera looked and sounded as cheerful and casual as if she had just come in from sipping fresh limeade on the porch.

"Hello, Eddie. Hi, Rick. I'm Doctor Visconti. Your uncle called me in to consult on your treatment. I was his doctor—did he tell you about me?" Unrehearsed, unprompted, completely genuine—she was wonderful. Within two minutes, it was as if they'd known her forever.

"—I'm not going to tell you any more about what he was like as a patient. Except this: While he behaved worse than any other patient I've ever had, I've never known anyone with more strength, more courage, or more determination. Not even my dad. If you can be like your uncle, you can behave as badly as you want to." She looked at me. I nodded at the man I'd called in. He took it up from there.

"Edward. Richard. What's going to happen in the next few minutes is important. Very important. Up until now, you haven't been told everything about your injuries, or about the treatments available for them. Doctor Visconti is going to tell you now. After she does—and I ask you to listen very carefully to her—I am going to ask you both some questions. All right?"

"Yes," said Eddie.

"Uncle Richard? Is it okay?"

"Yes, Rick. This is serious stuff, but everybody here is on your side."

"Okay, then."

Primavera took up the thread. "First of all—," and she then explained everything to them, simply and clearly.

It had been too good an opportunity to pass up. The League for the Defense of the Rights of Minors had been trying to establish a legal precedent for intercession in a case where a parent denied a minor child medical care or treatment for a non-fatal condition, which, although not life-threatening, would have a lasting negative impact upon that child for the rest of his or her life. I had called them in, after I had obtained the hospital's consent and assistance. There were dozens of volunteers in the hospital right then, acting as blockades and extra security. The man who told my nephews what was going to happen was one of the Greater Advocates of the League. I'm a Lesser Advocate, myself. I do a lot of pro-bono work for them. They helped me once, remember? I never forgot. I'm loyal. I am as loyal and true as a mirror; one of those mirrors that enlarges. I return whatever I am shown, good or bad, help or injury, love or contempt, three times magnified.

If there had been a legal precedent, my brother George would have had medication and treatment for his neurohormone imbalance, done better in school and better in life, learned to control his impulses, and perhaps not gotten into the financial mess that sent him to prison.

If there had been a legal precedent, Rejoice Stanley would have had medication and treatment for her depression, the dark compulsion which led her to commit murder and then suicide might not have seized her, and she might still be alive.

If there had been a legal precedent, I—well, I've already told you enough about my own case.

I was right there, a relative close to the boys, a Lesser Advocate and a lawyer, I knew one of the doctors already on their case—Tyrell—and I also knew a Nobel Prize nominee who was willing to travel thousands of kilometers on a moment's notice to lend her authority to a good cause.

It was risky. We could all have been arrested, sued, lost our various licenses, and joined George in prison. Thus putting an end to all my ambitions. But I was betting it wouldn't come to that. I was right; Elyse caved. There were lots of media on the spot, so everything was recorded for posterity. Once both boys stated for the record that despite their Imagist upbringing, they wanted to have corrective surgery and de-scarring treatment, Elyse disappeared for a moment with her lawyers. She came back to make a hastily prepared statement to the effect that her previous refusal was made in a emotional moment because of her recent bereavement, and she gave her permission that they should have all the care necessary for their complete recovery and restoration.

Her acquiescence made the whole event all foreplay but no orgasm. The media evaporated, and we got little coverage. No precedent was established. Nobody was even arrested! And my mother was pissed.

On the other hand, the way in which the League had handled things was utterly without flaw. The volunteers had been available and ready, the hospital had assisted fully and generously, and my two nephews could not have been braver or better throughout. It had been one for the textbooks, and the League had not gotten so close for years. So our spirits, all in all, were good.

Especially mine. After all, I was responsible for its planning and execution. And best of all, Primavera was on the same continent and in the same room with me. I was already planning to take advantage of that in every way possible. There was a lot in that alone to make me happy.