Unfortunately, one of the police officers on duty in the kitchen had a portable television, and on her return from the bathroom, Grace saw and heard exactly what was going on. The horde of anti-mutant protesters on deathwatch, that the man in the hospital was still in critical condition, predictions of an imminent riot. It nearly drove her back into the bathroom, but instead she went to the front door and opened it.
It was an ironically beautiful day in early autumn; the sky was a deep, peaceful blue. She could see neighbors, people she had known for years, peering out of windows or standing on their front walks, looking over at her house. Some of them hastily let their curtains drop or turned away when they saw her. Others pretended not to notice.
I can't let Danny come here. It's too dangerous. She turned around, shut the door, fished her cellphone out of her purse, and called her brother. "Danny—" She explained everything.
"Are you sure, Gracie?" he asked, when she told him she wanted him to turn around. "Because I—."
"Yes, Danny, I am. I'll have all kinds of help. This—this special escort, and everything." Danny was closest to her in age of all her brothers; only thirteen months older. She could feel her throat growing thick with tears. "I'll call you when I can. I don't know where they'll be taking me. I love you, you know? And tell—Pass that along to the rest of them, okay?" She hung up before he could reply, and wiped her face. I'm afraid.
She could imagine the mob swarming over any car, any vehicle that tried to drive out of there with her inside, rocking the car until it tipped over. She could see the glass breaking in her mind's eye, see herself pulled out, and then…
There will be no future. Not for me. Not for the baby.
"What's going to happen to me? What should I do?" She pulled out her little lion, hoping for something—anything.
"Fly the friendly skies." it advised her.
She looked at it for a moment. I don't think it can be doing commercial endorsements for an airline, so it's being cryptic. I hope I understand when the time comes. I wish I could just leap up into the sky and fly away from here. Some mutants can fly, but I don't seem to have that power, damn it. Did I have to get voices in my head? Voices with a sense of humor? She stuffed the lion back in her pocket, and went upstairs.
Up on the third floor, Eleanor was surveying the workrooms. "I have to hand it to you, Grace. Even though you told me this level was untouched, I thought this would be the worst of it. But ninety percent of this is ready to go right out the door!"
"Years of the craft-show circuit. I hate scrambling to get it all together at the last minute, so I keep things organized. My biggest concern is the computer. Of course I threw out the original boxes and packing material just last week."
"Isn't that how it always is?" Eleanor said. "But you have all this yarn, so if you put plenty of yarn around the computer in a box, it should be safe enough."
"Good idea."
The worst of it was over. Several of the police officers pitched in to carry sweater boxes and bins down to the first floor, until at last Grace was left to pack her DVD collection in a crate. "Eleanor? Of all the things I have to thank you for, I want to thank you most of all for never once saying 'Everything happens for a reason.'"
"You don't have to thank me for that. As it happens, I do believe it, but in this case I think the answer is that the human race has far too many prejudiced fools in it. What is that noise I hear?"
There was indeed a roaring sound echoing through the room.
"Ma'am?' The police chief appeared on the stairs. "Your special escort's here. Look out the window."
Grace went to the front window, just in time to see a jet like a piece of sculpted night make a vertical landing in the parking lot. "Told ya." chirped the lion from her pocket.
"Who are they?" she asked, as a ramp came down, and several people in dark jumpsuits stepped out—followed by a man in a wheelchair. A bald man in a wheelchair.
All right. There's my 'Bald guy on wheels'.
Charles Xavier maneuvered his chair into the townhouse, and stopped in the hallway, which was crammed with sturdy plastic containers and boxes.
"What is all of this?" Scott asked, looking around.
"Wool, mostly." said Wolverine. "A lotta different kinds." He tapped his nose. "I can smell it."
"It's my work." a woman said. Xavier looked toward the stairs, where a woman stood on the landing. He recognized Grace Engstrom from the videos—the photographs had done her little justice. She had elegant bone structure and enormous dark eyes, although the strain of recent events made her look gaunt and haunted, with purplish shadows under those eyes. "I'm a professional knitwear designer."
"Ms. Engstrom. Hello. I'm Charles Xavier. I'm sorry we aren't meeting under more pleasant circumstances."
"So am I." She came forward, extending her hand. He took it.
"Let me perform the introductions. This is Doctor Jean Grey, and that's Scott Summers. Next to him is Ororo Munro, and over there is Logan." She murmured a hello and shook hands all around.
"Logan—?" She made the usual assumption—that some other name would follow.
"Just Logan." said that individual, curtly.
"I'm very glad to meet you all." She said it automatically, then sighed. "Well—what now?"
"Now?" Xavier reached for her mind with his own, brushing against intense emotional turmoil, a roil so strong it blocked any possibility of reading her thoughts. "It seems as if you have a lot of luggage here. Why don't you and I get better acquainted—that is, if my staff will be kind enough to move these aboard our aircraft."
"There's an awful lot of it. I just didn't know—." Grace began.
"I believe we can accommodate it, if you want to bring it along. It may be that your stay with us will be of some length, and I hope you might find some measure of contentment while you are there."
"It would help, having my work at hand—and I have several important commissions to work on." she admitted.
"We'll load it up." Jean volunteered, and took up a box. Scott followed suit.
"Yeah, okay." Logan opened the nearest box, and took out a sweater. "What does one of these sell for?" he asked.
"Logan, don't be rude." chided Storm.
"That one? Five hundred dollars." Grace Engstrom replied.
"Five hundred—? What makes this worth so much more than something you'd get at a—a Wal-Mart for forty bucks?" he asked, shaking his head.
"I suppose it's like the difference between a 'Holiday Feast' frozen TV dinner and a fresh hot turkey with all the trimmings, made at home by a very good cook." Grace rubbed her eyes.
"Huh." Wolverine considered. "Okay, I can see that." He put the sweater away again, fairly neatly, picked up the box, and exited.
"Is there somewhere we might talk?" the professor prompted. "I'm sure you'll feel better for knowing where you're going."
"I would like to know where I'm going. I truly would, and not just in a traveling sense. I think the dining room is the least destroyed of all the rooms on this level." She led him to a room with a wall that was entirely window; it looked out into a wooded area.
"A very peaceful view." He commented.
"Yes, it was one of the reasons I bought this house."
She uprighted a chair for herself, but as he tried to pull up to the table, his chair halted with a bump. "Excuse me, but I seem to be stuck on something."
"Oh!" She swooped down to free him, and set the offending object on the table. It was an antique brass bookend, a design he had seen before; a thoughtful-looking monkey in a chair, reading a book inscribed 'Darwin'.
It made him smile. "I like the eyeglasses on the monkey. That's a whimsical touch I haven't seen before."
"He is unique, isn't he? I've had him for years." Her eyes flicked to the bookend, in an oddly familiar way.
Strange, thought the professor, and began, "As I said, my name is Charles Xavier, and I'm the headmaster of a school in upper state New York, Xavier's School for the Gifted. 'Gifted', in this case, means not only academically, but genetically. Everyone there, my students, my staff, and myself—all of us are mutants. You will be among others like yourself, those who will understand and respect you."
That made her smile wryly, and he caught a scrap of her thoughts. 'Just have to wait and see about that. I might be too weird even for them.'
He didn't comment. She was under enough stress without knowing he could read her thoughts—at least some of them. Although she was calmer now, her mind was still difficult to comprehend, as if she were a radio station just out of range—the signals distorted and blocked with interference. "The school is located on my family's private estate. The house is large, and the grounds, spacious. Our security is excellent. You will be welcome there as long as you need a safe, secure environment.
"I might add also that Jean is hoping you will remain with us through the duration of your pregnancy, and for the birth. She is a medical doctor, and both as a doctor and as a possible future mother, she wants very much to be of help to you."
"That's very kind of her. May I ask what your power is?"
"Of course. I'm telepathic. While that does mean I can read minds, I respect the privacy and individuality of others." Her eyes flicked to the monkey bookend again, almost as if it were a person at the table with them, someone who had made a comment. Very odd indeed, he thought. "Please, ask whatever questions you might have. I will do my best to answer them."
"Thank you." she said, and her eyes went to the monkey again. "I do have a lot of questions to ask, and I need someone I can talk to about—something that's bothering me. You might be that person. I hope you are."
"I will do my best", he replied, wondering what she would say.
"All right." She took a deep breath. "Yesterday, I found out I was pregnant, and a mutant, at practically the same moment. It's hard to say which was the greater shock, especially considering I'm forty-seven."
"How so? Not finding out you're a mutant, I mean, forgive me, but—?"
"That I'm pregnant? With my history, it was a surprise. A happy surprise, but an enormous one. My husband—ex-husband now—and I first started trying to have a family twenty years ago. We tried and failed, despite the aid of medical science and reproductive technology of all kinds, for eight years. That was when we divorced. He found someone who could have children."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"It's all right. I've had bigger problems since then." She glanced around her ruined room, as if to make the point. "Anyhow, after two years or so of being single, I met someone, and I lived with him until I got sick of the sound of his breathing, which took five years. We didn't use birth control, and if I had gotten pregnant, I would have been ecstatic. But I didn't.
"A year or two after that, I met—my biggest mistake. He was seven years younger than I. He wanted to take me to Hawaii, and we went. I didn't find out until we'd been there four days that he'd been using my credit cards to pay for everything. It wasn't that he didn't have a job. He just… The way I found out was after his arrest on our fourth day there. He was in a 'massage parlor' when the police raided it, and he was caught with his 'masseuse'— a thirteen-year-old Filipino girl."
"Oh." said Xavier. "That's terrible."
"Yes. It was, all around. Worst day of my life, up until yesterday. He called me and begged me to come make bail, swearing all the lies he could. He was a writer, you see, so he said he just went in to do research, never touched her, and so on. I doubted that, but I went. He was with me, after all.
"When I got to the bail bondsman with my cards, I pulled out the one I used the least. It wouldn't go through, and I called the card company. That was how I found out. My revenge was that I abandoned him.
"I went back to the hotel and checked out. On my way to the airport, I stopped at a thrift store to donate his luggage and everything in it—everything he had with him. Then I cashed in his airline ticket and flew home immediately—or as close to immediately as the airlines could manage. He called me once after that. I told him the only reason I wasn't pressing charges was because I wanted to pretend he never existed in the first place, and going to court would interfere with it. And that if I ever saw his face again, he would be going home with some of his teeth in a brown paper bag. But I didn't get pregnant."
She put her head in her hands, and spoke to the table. "Then, about two and a half months ago—I—I—I don't know you well enough to talk to you about that yet. I'm sorry. I don't usually confide my romantic history to someone I've just met, but I'm trying to work my way up to talking about what's bothering me most." She sat up and looked at him again.
"It's quite all right—although I am wondering what could be harder for you to talk about than your Hawaiian misadventure."
She laughed a little at that. "He was my only true romantic disaster. Poor judgment on my part. Yesterday, after my doctor told me I was pregnant, he told me I was a mutant. He seems to think I'm aging too slowly."
"If I may offer an opinion—if you had been pointed out to me at a social function by someone who said, 'That's Grace Engstrom. How old would you say she is, and what does she do for a living?', I would have replied, 'She's in her forties, and she's an actress.'"
"I don't mind being in my forties. I love it. I feel more confident in myself and comfortable in my skin than ever. I don't even mind people looking at me and guessing my age correctly. Ann Arbor is a university town, and undergraduate boys still sometimes walk into things because they're looking at me instead of where they're going, so I know I still have 'it'. I like to be noticed and admired, and I'd be a liar if I said otherwise. I know it's vain of me."
"I would say it was only human of you. What I meant was that while you are beautiful, you don't look young. You look as though you put a lot of effort and a lot of money into staying as you are, however."
"Um. I don't. Except for my hair. I spend about four hundred dollars a month to keep it looking good. No plastic surgery, no personal trainers, no dermatologists. And I never thought anything of it—until yesterday. To tell you the truth, when I look in the mirror, I see the lines that don't go away, the lines that weren't there ten years ago. I don't see the lines that aren't there."
"Again, human. However, I think we might have strayed from the topic at hand."
"Yes, and I sound like the most narcissistic—Anyhow, what I was going to say, was that if that—extended youth—is my mutation, is it possible to have more than one?"
"Absolutely."
"And is it possible that, just like I'm pregnant now, could I have mental powers of some kind that are only developing now? I thought mutations expressed themselves before you were twenty."
"It would be most unusual. I take it you are experiencing some mental effect you never did before."
"Yes." She glanced at the monkey again. "I was wondering if it might be the baby, affecting me."
"If you are correct that you conceived about nine or ten weeks ago, then it's not very likely. At least not directly, for a fetus does not begin to produce brainwaves until about the twenty-fourth week of gestation. Even if your child was developing more quickly due to a mutation, you would now look as though you were in that stage of development, because brain function is a matter of brain size and complexity. Without brainwaves, there can be no mental powers."
"I understand. But you said 'directly'. Is there an indirect way?"
"There could be. Most mutants develop their powers during their teen years because they are producing the hormones which activate those centers of their brains—but pregnancy produces hormones as well, hormones which are unique to that condition."
He recalled his studies. "Human chorionic gonadotrophin, for example, which is responsible for morning sickness, as well as other things. Or human placental lactrogen, which is a group of hormones responsible for the enlargement of the mammary glands in preparation for eventual breast feeding. It could well be that your power, whatever it might be, was lying dormant in you until the hormones of pregnancy activated it. What causes you to suspect you have a power developing?"
At that moment, he received a mental message from Jean. 'Professor? Two things have just happened. They've just announced that the man in the hospital has died. The crowd is getting ugly, and they may cross the property line at any moment.'
'Then we have to move. Are we ready?' he responded.
'Yes, but that was only the first thing.'
'What is the second?'
'Magneto and the Brotherhood are here.'
