Chapter 2 Nocturnal missions
Holding the bundle of sheets, pyjama bottoms, and towel as tightly wrapped as he could, Gordon made the silent and sorry little midnight pilgrimage down to the laundry in the basement one more time.
It was one he'd become so familiar with that he no longer needed a flashlight. Carefully past Scott's room, because Scott slept in a sort of earnest state of vigilance – Gordon once joked that Scott slept at attention, and even though everyone laughed (even Scott), it wasn't far wrong. Easily past John and Virgil's room, but watching for the tell-tale sliver of light under the door in case either of them was up late into the night, studying (the freaks). Super stealth mode for the landing outside Dad's room. Dad was often away, working, but sometimes he'd come home at a very late hour so Gordon knew never to take the Dad stretch lightly. Carefully down the stairs, and always stick close to the bannisters when navigating step numbers twelve and fifteen.
Grandma's bedroom was on the ground floor. She liked it there because she was first up each morning and she said she could attack the day without disturbing anyone. By that she meant lighting the fires, tidying up the mess left by five busy boys, cooking seven breakfasts, starting anew the eternal battle with the laundry. Gordon knew that she was long asleep in the early hours of the morning, but that she sometimes stayed awake until midnight reading, so his own strategies depended on just when he'd woken, wet and stinking and ashamed, again.
It was so tiring, and Gordon was tired beyond anything he'd ever known before. Partly from the nightly ritual of stripping his bed as quietly as he could so as not to wake Alan (that would be disaster, right there), sneaking down through the house in the cold and dark to the laundry, and then sitting there watching the machines do their washing and drying. That part only ever took about twenty minutes once he'd figured out how to set the microwave powered laundry unit properly. Another ten minutes for the ionisation decontamination, and the load was done. The disruption to his sleep, and then the effort to trek back to his bedroom, re-make his bed and try and warm himself up enough to fall asleep again was enough to wear him out.
But it was the miserable mental processes that exhausted him as much as anything physical. Each night he waged the same battle. Here, in the hopeful corner, stood his army of denial. Those two old women were making it up. How would they know what happened on this farm? And so what anyway, Dad will still claim me for his son, they couldn't manage without me, hell, imagine how boring this place would be if I didn't liven it up once in a while. Alan couldn't deal with it, Virgil wouldn't stand for it, Scott would have someone's head on a platter, if –
And here, swooping in from the terrified corner, the army of despair. If they kicked me out. If Dad said "You're no son of mine, you have no place here." If they all looked at me with contempt, hatred.
If they didn't look at me at all.
Gordon would always pull his knees up, perched on the folding table, watching the lights flashing on the laundry unit.
What if they didn't acknowledge him? That's what people did, isn't it, they 'acknowledged' someone as their son. What did that mean? What if they didn't? Did that mean that no one would look at him, speak to him, that no one would acknowledge his existence? It was the ongoing waking nightmare that came crashing into Gordon through all his powers of resilience, impressive though they were.
He saw himself at the family table, surrounded by his brothers, his dad, his grandmother, and they were having their usual boisterous conversations, plates passing, jokes flying, questions and admonitions and the odd bread roll sailing through the air until Dad Put His Foot Down. John would be surreptitiously trying to read a book – he always sat at the end by the old bureau so he could kind of turn and support the book on the lower shelf while still sitting at the table. Eating was optional, if the book was really good. Alan would be talking non-stop about how he'd spent his day, regardless of the fact it was almost always the same thing he'd done the day before, with minor variations according to the weather, injuries, and if the dog had misbehaved. Virgil would be humming some new tune under his breath. They'd tried a 'no humming at the table' rule, but it was hopeless, and abandoned once everyone realised Virgil didn't even know he was humming. Scott would be trying to talk to Dad, and Dad would be making vague noises in response as one half of his brain wrestled with some design problem. Grandma would be displaying a level of vigilance the World Security Force would envy, stifling all attempts at misrule. And Gordon…
Gordon would be a ghost. He would pull at sleeves, he would crack jokes, but no-one would hear him, no one would look his way. He would reach for plates that simply passed by him, untouchable. In his nightmare he would begin to shout and wave his arms, and the Tracy family en masse simply talked around him and over him.
Unacknowledged. Not there. No longer Gordon Tracy.
It was this nightly battle between his two visions of the future that wore him down, piece by brittle piece. Grandma noticed it, and insisted he took a tonic each morning which he claimed was made from the armpits of rabid trolls. It didn't stop her from forcing it down him in a bid to cure his shadowed eyes, his lack of energy. Scott noticed it, and had tried trapping Gordon on the landing one day to ask, in that kind of official, important way he had, if there was anything wrong. Gordon gave him a masterclass of deflection through annoyance which, sadly, Scott was too straight to appreciate. Virgil noticed, and he was far more subtle about his approach, getting Gordon to help him with the horses one day and gently steering the conversation around to what might or might not be going on in Gordon's life. With any other problem, Gordon would have unburdened himself then and there, gratefully. But this one was something he could never share. The act of doing so would render all future one on one times with any of his brothers an awful, unthinkable impossibility.
Of them all it was John who became his unwitting helper. And that was only because Gordon Tracy was a) devious, b) sneaky, c) uncannily observant or d) all of the above.
Gordon had decided, after a week of doubt and fear that would have paralysed a less buoyant child, that he had to find out the truth. Easily done: DNA search. Not so easily done: DNA sample from his father, signature from both parties, and access to the v-cert unit with a passcode of both participants.
Since the demise of the postal service for anything other than parcels in 2031, v-cert units had taken the role of sending hard copy documents, still used for certification purposes in some forensic circumstances. A DNA certificate was one of them. All citizens had their unique passcode issued at birth, something to be guarded closely, and something which proved irresistible to Gordon Tracy. Over the years, through stealth and determination, he had gathered all but Alan's passcode – not for any nefarious reason as such, but simply because Gordon was the kind of child who collected forbidden information as some others might collect badges or butterflies. He knew each of his brothers' secret hiding places (Virgil's was incredibly lame), each of their secret crushes (for Virgil's, see above), how much each one saved over their summer jobs. If asked, he might say it was insurance against brotherly plots and retributions for his own devilment; but the truth was hidden far more successfully in Gordon's own heart. He collected these titbits in an unconscious effort to attach each of his brothers ever more tightly to him, with threads of secrecy that wound each into his soul. If he knew these things, if he kept them safe, he could never lose his brothers in the great yawning darkness of growing up and adulthood.
So he had his own and his father's passcode. A swab of his own inner cheek provided his DNA: a faked science experiment for school ("We're gonna check to see how many microorganisms grow in people's saliva, Dad. Don't you want to know how many grow in yours? Bet you've got the most of anybody's!") provided a sighing Jeff Tracy's. The packet containing the swabs in a sterilised container had gone off last week, and that afternoon a message had come through to state that the DNA work was ready for delivery upon receipt of authorisation. Answers were sitting there, waiting, and what he didn't have was his father's signature.
In a nod to simpler times, signatures were still required for the v-cert. A sample copy was input into the system, regularly updated as people aged, and Jeff Tracy's distinctive signature was a well-used one. The problem was that Gordon couldn't forge it to save his life. And the only one of his siblings who he knew for a fact could do so was the least predictable.
John.
Figuring out his own plan of attack for this campaign was what was occupying his mind tonight. A bribe? No, John didn't really care about money, unless he was saving for some new item of astronomical equipment – and Dad usually helped him out there, so the need wasn't pressing. Blackmail? Gordon wasn't above using it, but nothing he had on John would be enough to sway John if he set his face against it. John chose to die on some very particular hills. Indifferent to invasions of his privacy, curtailing of privileges, popular outrages, but incandescent at perceived cruelty of any kind, to any one or thing.
For almost anything else, with John it was best to offer a straight appeal. As the fourth youngest, Gordon studied each of his brothers' peculiarities with a diligence that came from powerlessness, and he played upon them with consummate skill when required. John despised prevarication or deviousness. Straight and open, and the answer would be yay or nay.
But this? There was nothing straightforward about this. An oblique approach was doomed to failure, and the only one he could take here.
He was so absorbed in his dilemma, folded up on the table, head down against his knees, that he didn't hear the approaching footsteps until it was too late and the light was suddenly glaring at him.
"Gordon? Sweetheart, what are you doing down here."
Sweet frozen Jesus on an ice floe, it was Grandma.
Blinking, stupid with tiredness and surprise, Gordon watched as Grandma came over to the laundry unit and looked suspiciously at the flashing lights.
"What on earth are you doing laundry in the middle of the night for, Gordon Cooper Tracy?"
"I – I had –it was an accident, I swear, Grandma."
She peered closely at him.
"Look at you down here in the dark. You're shivering. What was it that couldn't wait until morning?"
And, horror of horrors, Gordon felt the dreaded blush begin to crawl up his cheeks.
"It really was an accident, Grandma. I swear. I just – I spilt something in bed."
"In your bed?" She looked from him to the unit again. "Are your sheets in there?" Then she turned back to notice that Gordon's calves were naked under his dressing gown, and her eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Oh, I see. And you thought you'd spare me the chore?" At Gordon's nod, she said, "Well, there's no point wasting the night. That washing's nearly done. Come on. We'll have a hot chocolate while it dries, eh?"
Still disoriented by the sudden shift from dark solitude to bright Grandma, Gordon followed her obediently into the kitchen, where she sat him at the table and busied herself preparing the drinks.
"Now, tell me young man. This isn't the first night this has happened, is it?" As Gordon opened his mouth to answer, she added, "And do not test my patience with any nonsense, Gordon."
When it came down to it, Gordon could prevaricate, obfuscate and deflect to brilliant effect, but he could not tell an outright lie without broadcasting it a mile away. It was, he considered, his one major character flaw.
Grandma nodded to herself. "That's what I thought. You've been looking very peaky these last few weeks. I never did know what peaky meant before, but I've decided I do now and you're it."
"I guess I'm flattered. I'm in the dictionary."
"You're in there under a lot of other words too, young man, some of them even less complimentary." Grandma's voice was sharp, but full of good humour. "So, the reason the unit needs auto-flush each morning is because I have a ninja washerman down here?"
"It needs what?"
"Exactly." Grandma picked up her drink and blew on it to cool it. "I knew something was up, and I figured it was you by a process of elimination – now, who would be silly enough to be doing laundry in the wee hours without remembering to flush through after the load? – and decided tonight I'd put a stop to it."
"Damn. You're good, Grandma."
"You better believe it. Now then." She out her drink down and looked at him seriously. "What's up?"
That blush was back, reddening his neck and upper chest as well, and Grandma nodded.
"I thought so. Well, it's a conversation you should have by rights with your father, but since he's in Osaka for another week, I daresay it's up to me. Right." She cleared her throat, then fixed him with a glare. "First of all, it's perfectly natural. Completely normal."
"It is?" It came out as a squeak. "Uh – what is?"
"There's no need to be embarrassed, Gordon. Boys of your age do this all the time."
"They do?" Gordon was astonished, and couldn't help but feel the first tendrils of relief in his heart. Natural. Normal. This could be dealt with. Grandma would know what to do.
"I've been through this with all your brothers – well, not Alan yet, of course. We worked out a system, and you and I can do the same."
"Wow. You mean, Scott…?"
"Yes, I mean Scott, and John, and Virgil. And your father, come to think of it, but I'm sure you don't want to. It will settle down in time, and in the meanwhile, we have a system."
And blinding illumination came to Gordon, riding on the coattails of unimaginable embarrassment.
"Don't say it, Grandma."
She snorted. "Alright, though I seem to recall you asking your father what fornication was in front of his guests last year when you knew very well what it was. All big eyed devilry, 'how do you do it, Dad?' If you can ask about that for the purposes of embarrassing your father, I daresay you can handle wet dreams."
"Oh, god, Grandma, you went there."
"Oh, alright, nocturnal emissions, how's that?"
Gordon had his head on the table, groaning.
"Not a whole lot better."
"Now," she said briskly, "for your brothers I just got them to strip the bed in the morning and put on fresh sheets themselves. You can do that, can't you?"
Gordon refused to look up, and his grandmother chuckled evilly.
"Good. I'm glad we got that settled. If I'd known earlier… but never mind. And don't worry, it will be our secret."
The words echoed in Gordon's chest. Our secret. The thought of actually sharing the burden that really shackled him was unbearably tempting.
And implacably impossible.
The disappointment was profound as Gordon finally nodded, and mumbled, "Thanks, Grandma."
"Right. Bed. And if it happens again, leave it to me. Not a word to your brothers, although they would understand, you know."
He nodded again, and dutifully set off for his bedroom, now weighted with the additional tasks of faking out his grandmother each morning and being even more careful with the nightly washing missions. As he did so he reflected; there was only one brother who needed to be understanding, and even he couldn't know what he was being understanding about.
He waited until late afternoon the next day, when Scott and Virgil were gone into town to play in the local football competition and he'd managed to deliberately piss off Alan to the point of his little brother retreating to their summer treehouse, despite the cold of a Kansas fall. Manipulating an eight year old to the point of tears. Gordon Tracy, hero.
He'd make it up to him. He'd make it up to all of them, for every rotten trick he'd ever pulled (even if they all had been brilliantly planned and crashingly funny). He was less than four hours from finding out if he was part of this family, beyond challenge, beyond question. His palms were sweating and he found himself swallowing when he didn't really need to. His right leg wouldn't stop jiggling.
John was where Gordon knew he'd be; in his room, at his desk, lost in a holo-projection of a distant galaxy that just looked like a swarm of fluoro bees to Gordon. He knocked on the door after he'd come in, and cleared his throat.
"Hey, John?"
"No."
Good start.
"Would you forge Dad's signature for me?"
"No."
"It wouldn't take you long, and it is important."
"No." John pulled back, blinking. "Wait, what?"
Gordon tried for his sunniest expression, but he knew he was failing. It felt like it did when he was swimming in the local pool and his arms cramped halfway down the length of it. He would try to keep his rhythm, hold onto his stroke, but his body just wouldn't do what he wanted it to.
He knew his eyes were giving him away.
John looked at him in silence for a long time. An excruciating time. Gordon didn't fidget, his right leg stilled under the scrutiny.
"You want me to forge Dad's signature." John hadn't raised his voice, so Gordon counted that as a positive. "You'd need that for the v-cert. You want some official document sent to you and you don't want anyone knowing, especially Dad."
Damn, John was scary.
"Yes." Gordon knew John didn't even really need that confirmation. "And I was kinda hoping you'd do it today."
"Now, when everyone else is gone." John nodded to himself. "What did you do to Alan to get rid of him?"
Gordon swallowed, but he didn't drop his gaze. "Was mean to him. He's in the treehouse."
"What are you going to do about that?"
"Fix it. Make it up to him." Gordon could see John wanted more, so added, "He can have all my im-ex movies. And I won't tease him for a week. A month."
John said nothing. Gordon waited. Finally, John nodded again.
"I don't like bullying. You better fix this." He pursed his lips, considering. "You've been off lately. Something's bothering you, but you haven't confided in anyone. Plus, you're wetting your bed." At Gordon's astounded look, he smiled slightly. "You're using that old scented talc to try and cover the scent of ammonia. Works for most people. Doesn't work with me."
"Wow. That's spooky."
"It's called intelligence. You might try it sometime." John frowned. "Does this have anything to do with all of that?"
Gordon clenched his jaw, but nodded.
"Hmm. Well, I must be inured to your brand of obnoxiousness or something, but I kinda miss you being Gordon. If I sign this, will it help?"
Honesty having worked this far, Gordon hesitated. "I hope so?" In the dawning hope of success with John, he had almost forgotten that there was a chance this would ruin things forever. His face fell. "I don't know. Maybe not."
"Is it illegal?"
"I don't think so." Couldn't be illegal to get your own DNA, right?
"And you're not using it to cheat in some way for some reason?"
That was clearer. "No."
John speared him with another look, then shrugged. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah, okay. I've been reading Kornhauser and Geijic on Deci and Ryan's theory of self-determination, and I think it's important that everyone meets their needs in their own way. If this will help, I'll do it."
Dimly, Gordon understood that for his brother, this was another kind of experiment, a trial of a way of living a life that met all of John's weird standards for himself.
"And no questions asked?"
John shrugged. "Just promise me I'm not doing anything that will hurt you, or Dad, or the family generally. Or anyone else, come to think of it."
Promise him? Gordon opened his mouth, and nothing came out. It was right there, so easy, so simple and he'd get his answers, but all that sang in his mind was everybody's gonna get hurt. Everybody.
It was so horribly clear that he couldn't breathe for the truth of it.
"Hey, Gordo?" And John, the least likely to ever hug under normal circumstances up to and including birthdays, Christmas and unexpected sporting triumphs was suddenly stepping forward, frowning, his arms opening. "Gords?"
And Gordon, damned, stepped into it with a sudden sob.
John held tight as Gordon wrapped his arms around his waist and shook with the terror of it all. He said nothing, only held on as his little brother buried his face in his chest, breathing heavily. At last, he relaxed his arms a little and Gordon bought a clue, stepping back, overcome with emotion he had never wanted to share and never planned on showing.
"Pretty big deal, huh?" John said. "Okay. How's this. You promise me you'll come to me if this, whatever you're doing, gets you into some place you can't deal with or is going to hurt you. Deal?"
Gordon wiped his eyes on his sleeve and nodded. John gestured to the door.
"Come on then. Let's go be illegal."
They traipsed down to his father's office, unlit in the late afternoon gloom. The v-cert machine sat in standby mode, green light dulled. John glanced at Gordon, who looked back at him and nodded.
"You got the authorisation codes?"
Gordon pulled a creased piece of paper from his pocket and carefully punched in his code, his father's code, and the authorisation request code from the email. A moment, then the screen lit up with the swirling patterns upon which the signature would be written. The soft gelatinous mass would absorb and compare each stroke of the e-pen before affirming authenticity.
"You can do this?" Gordon's voice was almost a whisper. John grinned, showing his rarely seen mischievous streak.
"Since I was thirteen." He leant forward and confidently wrote his father's signature into the screen. A long pause, then the light flared green again and Gordon blew out his breath.
"You did it. You did it." Gordon grabbed John in a quick hug again, unsurprised when John just took it without reciprocating. John had already blown this year's hugging budget on Gordon upstairs.
"So this is what you're after?" John said, as the v-unit burst into action and a first sheet of paper began slowly appearing from its port. Gordon stared at it as if it were something venomous sliding into his life, but he nodded his head.
"Okay, well, enjoy." And with that his remarkable, brilliant brother left him to it. He paused at the doorway to say, "Remember, I'm here if you need my awesome again."
"Thanks, John." The papers were fully out now, sitting in the tray, bearing that faint chemical smell that always accompanied anything sent through the v-cert in this way. Gordon waited until his brother had begun tramping back to his eyrie, then pulled up the first one. His paper shook in his hand, and it took a moment before Gordon realised it was his hand shaking, not the paper itself.
'Dear Mr Tracy, further to your request of 04.12.49…'
His eyes scanned down the paper, nothing but garbled legalese, nothing that made sense. He dropped it, picked up the second one. This had graphs and bar charts with little dots on them. Meaningless numbers, gene identifiers, blood types, Rh factors, loci, alleles…
His eyes were swimming, and he dashed away tears. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. Why couldn't they just write it and say, yes, those lying old women are lying old women and the very thought that Gordon Tracy does not belong in this family is so utterly and patently absurd that it is a very insult to this institution that you even sent these sample in the first –
'Combined Paternity Index is 0%. Probability of Paternity is 0%. Jefferson Tracy is excluded as the biological father of Gordon Tracy.'
The sentence sat there. Inert. Words, just words. It didn't scream at him, or get bigger, or explode off the page.
No relationship.
Excluded.
Gordon felt himself drop suddenly to the floor, as if his legs just gave way without warning. There were no thoughts in his head, no words but those of the paper.
No relationship.
Excluded.
He sat there for a long time. It only became apparent to him when he tried to get up and realised his left leg had gone to sleep, trapped beneath his bottom. He flexed it, and rubbed it, dazedly.
The tingle of returning blood brought him back to the world, suddenly alert.
It was only now that he had the proof that the obvious course of action came clear to him.
Denial. Cover up. Deflection.
The first thing he had to do was destroy these papers. Galvanised, he scrambled off the floor and ran to the door, peering around to make sure the fire was on and no one was in there. The coast was clear and without another thought he ran for the fireplace, tearing both papers to pieces as he did so. In a heartbeat they were in the fire, crisping with that peculiar lime green colour that v-cert papers developed as they burnt. They'd leave a trace of elements that showed they'd been destroyed in the fire, and plenty of criminals had been caught by the fact, but nobody in this household would know to look for that.
Right. The evidence was gone. What else?
Hmm. Gordon stopped, thinking. And the panic that had driven him from his father's office went away, just dissipated like morning mist. A strange, detached sort of calmness descended on him as his mind attacked the situation, step by step, just like his father taught him.
Questions would be asked if he kept acting like a little wuss. Questions had been asked. He hadn't been acting like himself, and people had noticed. Well, that was stopping right now.
They wanted him to be more like 'Gordon'? He could so do that. Hell, he'd out-Gordon himself. There would be no joke left untried, no prank left untested, no prat left unfallen.
And no more tiredness. He'd buy those old people nappies and wear them if he had to, to get a good night's sleep. In the day he'd just push through. He'd never skip swim training, never admit to tiredness in the pool. He'd push himself until he achieved so much that everyone would want to claim him. Mind over matter, that's what his d –
Gordon took a shuddering breath. His dad. Jeff Tracy was his dad. There was no question, not just for others, but for him. He would have to train himself to think that, always. A mantra repeated on falling to sleep, on waking each morning. Jeff Tracy is my dad.
The price of being a Tracy was eternal vigilance, and one he was prepared to pay. There would be no doubt, ever, no treacherous cracks in the wall he would present to his family.
Gordon Tracy, fourth son of Jeff and Lucy, was ready for the longest con he'd ever play.
That night, as they all sat around the table, John stopped on his way to his far seat and tapped Gordon's shoulder. Alan was babbling excitedly about all the movies Gordon had just given him, so John waited with his inimitable patience until Alan drew breath, before saying, "Everything okay now, Gordo?"
And Gordon grinned at him beatifically, not a care in the world.
"Thanks, John. Everything's just perfect."
