Brian Taylor looked up from behind his desk when Kyle and Jessi entered his office through the open door.
"Kyle, Jessi, is there something I can do for you?" Brian asked.
"We'd like to go out for some coffee," Kyle said. "There are things we need to discuss."
Brian raised his eyebrows, "All right." He got up and came around from behind his desk. As he approached, he gestured for them to lead and followed them out the door and up the stairway. As they left the building and were walking through the pleasant spring afternoon, Brian commented, "I've heard rumors that Lukeson is under arrest and that Milworth killed himself when they tried to arrest him."
"How did you hear that?" Kyle asked.
"I go back a long way with the Latnok people," Brian said. "I still have a couple of friends who feed me the gossip." He shrugged, "Is it true?"
"That's what we've heard, too," Kyle agreed.
"It's just as well," Brian nodded. "That's less to worry about."
"You were worried about them?" Kyle frowned.
"I worry about anything that could be a threat to Jessi, or to you," Brian said. "Although that's primarily Tom Foss's job, I guess."
Kyle and Jessi exchanged glances. After they had gotten their beverages, they found a table in a patch of shade and sat down. Brian looked at Kyle expectantly.
"You're right," Kyle began. "That is less to worry about. Jessi and I are trying to clear up some of the things that are still troubling us."
"And how can I help?" Brian asked.
"Jessi and I want to know why Adam made you leave Latnok," Kyle said bluntly. He opened his hands questioningly, "We've asked a number of people and no one knows the exact reason. Just that he insisted on it. Adam told me that you had been 'acting in your own interest for years'."
Brian Taylor's heart rate increased and his perspiration level rose. I could sense a feeling of guilt, distress and dismay from him. We were clearly talking about something that he didn't want to talk about. We were asking the question that we needed an answer to. The one he had been avoiding.
"I suppose that's a fair assessment," Brian admitted. "Kyle, I wronged him deeply. He was my best friend and he had every right to be angry with me. Can't we just leave it at that? He's gone, there's nothing I can do to make it better now."
"We think it had something to do with Sarah's leaving," Kyle said. "And with how Jessi came to be." He glanced at Jessi and added, "I think that Jessi has a right to know."
Brian looked at Jessi for a moment and asked, quietly, "Do you want to know, Jessi? I've done things that Adam couldn't forgive me for, things I can't really forgive myself for." He looked into his coffee for a moment and then added, "But I'm still glad I did them."
"I want to know everything about Sarah," Jessi frowned and bit her lip, "And I need to understand what happened, how I came to be."
"I suppose you do," Brian agreed with a sigh. He looked into the distance for a moment, gathering his thoughts and then began, "I first met Adam Baylin when we were in high school together. I was really bright, one of the 'smart kids' in the school. Adam was so much more. He dazzled me, he was brilliant. We grew to be friends, best friends. He could have gone to college anywhere, but he wanted to go to University of Washington, and I followed him." He smiled in memory, "My parents had their hearts set on Caltech."
He stared into his coffee for a moment, rotating his cup and watching the waves, "The university environment was incredibly stimulating. Adam gathered bright people around himself. His gentle demeanor and brilliant mind made him our guru." He looked up, "One of the bright people he attracted was Sarah Emerson. She was stunning. She was brilliant, impulsive, and beautiful. She was the only one who came close to having Adam's mental abilities."
"My mother was incredible," Jessi said with enthusiasm. "I've read about her in the school papers from the time."
"The stories don't do her justice, Jessi," Brian smiled. "Almost the instant they met, they fell deeply in love. They were inseparable, always planning and dreaming great dreams. They had the idea for Latnok, made up the names the symbols, everything. I hung out with them a lot while this was going on." He glanced at Jessi, "It was during that period that I took that picture you have." He smiled at the memory then shook his head and sighed. "Of course I fell in love with her."
"You were in love with my mother?" Jessi asked, surprised.
"How could I not be?" Brian was almost indignant. "She was the most amazing woman I had ever met."
"Did you tell her?" Kyle asked.
"Of course not," Brian answered as if the question were absurd. "She was my best friend's girl. What a cliché!" He shrugged, "I guess that's because it happens so often. They were soul mates. I didn't have a remote chance with her. I was smart enough to see that. And, Adam really was my best friend. I just worked as hard as I could to help them make their dreams a reality. I loved them both, just in different ways."
"Is this when Latnok got started?" Kyle asked.
"Yes," Brian nodded, "We moved from dreams in diners to prospectuses and closely held corporations. We got investors and started Madacorp. There was quite a group of brilliant people around Adam by then and some of the ideas were lucrative. They started to gather money and influence."
"I've heard that money and power was the beginning of the trouble," Kyle said.
"It was," Brian agreed. "But another factor was the fact that Adam was becoming obsessed with the project to create children with extended gestation times such as he had – without risking a mother's life." He looked at Kyle, "You know that his own mother died in the experiment that created him?"
"Yes, he told me. He said he didn't want to risk a mother's life again. That he invented the pods to take the place of a mother."
"Sarah wasn't as convinced that it was a good idea. Experimenting on human beings troubled her." Brian said. "She was also troubled by some of the things that were happening in Latnok. Keels was starting to get some really strange ideas and Milworth was beginning to be fascinated by pathogens. There were outsiders, some of the investors, who were eager to encourage those activities. Sarah tried to warn Adam, but he was so focused on the pod experiment, he didn't pay attention. He viewed it all as a distraction." He sighed, "And he didn't want distractions. They fought about it. Their first fights."
"Is that why Sarah left?" Jessi asked.
"Oh, no," Brian shook his head. "Every couple has fights and they were deeply in love. But it did start to drive a wedge between them. At this point, Adam had created the pods and, with Professor Kern's assistance, brought several subjects to term. But when he tried to extract them, something went wrong and they died. He was devastated."
"We think we know what happened," Kyle interrupted. "At least we have a theory."
"Really?" Brian looked surprised, "You'll have to tell me about it." He paused for a moment to regroup and then continued his story, "Adam was running out of ideas. It hurt him deeply when they died, and Sarah was very unhappy about it as well. Adam got the idea that if he and Sarah created an embryo it would be strong enough to survive the process."
"And Sarah didn't want to do it?" Kyle asked.
"No, Sarah didn't want to have her child be an experiment," Brian agreed. "She told him that she would be glad to give him a child in the traditional way, that their child was likely to be brilliant on its own. But he was obsessed with making the process work and eventually persuaded her." He shook his head, and observed, "Adam could be very persuasive. In the end, she reluctantly agreed to furnish the eggs."
"But isn't Grace my egg donor?" Kyle objected.
"I'll get to that," Brian said, then continued. "For a man to make a donation for in vitro fertilization is a relatively simple process. For a woman, it's a more complex medical procedure. It's still routine, of course, but it's more personal. When the procedure was finished, Sarah had changed her mind. She said that it had become real to her and that she couldn't go through with it. She refused to let him use the eggs they had harvested. That's when they really fought. The next morning, she was gone."
"That's when my mother left?" Jessi asked.
"It was. We had no idea where she was," Brian sighed. "Adam had them put her eggs into deep freeze, which was a well established procedure, while he looked for her. Sarah was smart, if she didn't want to be found, even Adam couldn't find her. The experiment was on hold while we looked. Eventually we found a newspaper account of her being killed in an automobile accident."
"Some people have told me that they thought Brad Keels was involved," Kyle said.
"I thought it was possible, he had been heard to say that it would be simpler if she stayed gone and he was starting to hang out with some unsavory characters, mercenaries," Brian agreed. "But that was just a rumor. Adam was devastated by the news. I was too, but I had to hide the depth of my sorrow." His face reflected despair as he remembered.
Jessi reached over and, hesitantly, patted his hand comfortingly. He smiled at her in gratitude.
"Once Adam recovered somewhat, he never completely did of course, he started looking for another egg donor that he could combine his DNA with. He still felt that if he were part of the next subject it would have a better chance. I urged him to use Sarah's eggs. I said that she was dead and that her only chance of living on was through creating the child he wanted. He was adamant. He said that she had refused her permission when she was alive and that to use them after her death would be like violating her." Brian shrugged, "He was right, of course."
"This is where Grace came in?" Kyle asked.
Brian nodded, "Grace wanted Adam. Many of the women in Latnok were enamored with him to one degree or another. Grace probably most of all. She saw this as her chance to win his affections. She offered to be the egg donor for his experiment. She thought that if they had a child together, even in a pod, it would tie them together. Adam reluctantly agreed, Grace was brilliant and a good candidate. So Grace underwent the procedure to harvest her eggs and after the successful IVF combination, the most promising result was transferred successfully to the pod." He looked at Kyle, "That was you, Kyle."
"But Grace didn't get Adam," Kyle said.
Brian shook his head, "No, it had the opposite effect from what she had hoped. Instead of being grateful to her, he resented the fact that he had been forced to use her as the donor instead of Sarah." He opened his hands, "It was unfair, it wasn't Grace's fault, but people are often not logical. He pushed her away and rejected her advances. She felt betrayed and increasingly bitter." Brian shrugged, "I can't really blame her for feeling that way. She increasingly resented Adam and began spending more time with Keels and Milworth and the others. She started trying to gather her own power and undermine what Adam was doing." He nodded and added, "I can blame her for that."
"A woman scorned," Kyle said.
"Exactly," Brian agreed, nodding. "While Adam was preoccupied with watching you grow, I became preoccupied with Sarah's eggs, frozen in cold storage. They represented the only chance for the woman I loved to continue to exist, at least in some manner." He took a breath, "I knew Kern was becoming increasingly interested in pursuing aspects of the project other than what Adam wanted. I made a deal with the devil. With his help I arranged to have some of Sarah's eggs go through the IVF procedure with me as the father and we transferred the result to a pod that Kern had set up for me in a part of the facility that Adam didn't know about."
Kyle glanced at Jessi then looked at Brian, "Adam was right, using Sarah's eggs against her will was wrong."
"Of course it was," Brian agreed with some heat. "I know that. Look, I could live with the woman I loved being in love with my best friend. They were happy, she was happy. I could not live with her simply being gone with nothing left. Not when there was an alternative. So, all I had to do then was wait while the child developed and hope that Adam could figure out how to safely get you out of your pod."
"Then Kern kicked Adam out of the project," Kyle said.
"Yes, I did my best to dissuade him from doing more than that," Brian said. "But now I was stuck. The only one who was likely to be able to solve my extraction problem was the one man I didn't dare tell about Sarah's child. Years went by. I worked with Adam and hoped that he would eventually get control back and figure out how to get Kyle out."
"But, in the end, Foss did," Kyle said.
"Yes," Brian agreed. "I didn't know about it for a while, Adam was secretive about things, even from me. Finally, Kyle came to stay with Adam and I hoped to find out how he had safely gotten out of his pod. Then Adam was shot and Foss went off and firebombed Zzyzx even though Kyle told him not to." He sighed, "I thought it was all over then."
"But I survived," Jessi said.
"Yes and showed up at Madacorp," Brian said. "I got involved to try to get both you and Kyle out of there without that idiot Ballantine damaging your priceless brains. Once you were out, I claimed you as my daughter. When I had to go to Latnok to stop Ballantine, Adam found out about Jessi."
"He was angry with you?" Jessi said.
"I have never seen him so angry," Brian said, shaking his head. "He said that I had violated Sarah. If he didn't have the right to use her eggs without her permission, I most certainly didn't. Of course my deception had been going on for years by this point. He felt utterly betrayed. He demanded that I be thrown out of Latnok and they all went along with him." He picked up his coffee and took a drink, "And that was the last time I saw my best friend."
"So you pushed me to prove that you hadn't made a mistake," Jessi said.
"Yes, I pushed too hard, Jessi," Brian admitted, "I'm terribly sorry. I'm afraid I was thinking about you as proof that it was the right thing to do and not as a young girl. At first you wanted to push hard too, I just missed the point when we went too far. I should have taken better care of my daughter."
"And then Sarah came back and Foss told you to leave," Kyle said.
"It was more than just Foss telling me to leave," Brian protested. "The only excuse I had to give myself was that Sarah was dead. Here she was alive. How could I face her after what I had done? It was a violation.' He shook his head sadly, "My one chance to see her alive and I was too ashamed to face her. And now she's really gone."
Jessi said, "Sarah told me that she had been angry with you for what you had done. But she said that after she had met me she couldn't be angry any more. She forgave you."
Brian looked at Jessi, tears starting to flow and asked, "Sarah forgave me?"
Jessi nodded gravely and held his hand while he sobbed.
I had monitored his heart rate and other physiological signs throughout the telling of the tale. While he had been emotionally stressed by many of the events he had related, nothing indicated that he had been untruthful. The pieces fit. I understood why he felt ashamed and guilty. I understood why Adam had turned so strongly against him and thrown him out of Latnok. He had been wrong to use Sarah's eggs without her permission. It had been highly unethical. But as I watched Jessi hold her father's hand, I, too, was glad he had done it.