Part 9 (1/2)

James smiled as he carefully licked his spoon. ”That's not likely.”

”No,” she agreed, looking at his hard, lean body. ”I guess it isn't.”

Having finished off all the available ice cream, James stood up and began gathering the china. Annie waved him off. ”Don't worry about it, James. You cooked. I'll clean up.”

She saw the flash of surprise deep in his blue eyes. ”I can do it.”

”Just sit down,” she said impatiently. ”You're not a slave here, James.”

Obediently, he sat down and watched as she stashed everything in the dishwasher, scrubbed the pots, and wiped off the counters carefully. She wasn't this neat at home, but she knew Kay would kill her if there were any spots left on her prized black granite countertops.

”There,” she said at last. ”All finished. See' It didn't kill you to sit still.”

James flashed his flawless white teeth in a grin. ”I believe I could get used to it.”

”Do you want to get started on learning how to read'”

James nodded as he followed her out to the living room. ”Is it difficult'”

The eager hope in his voice slashed to her heart. It told her more clearly than his words had that no one had ever treated him like a person before.

”Yes,” she said carefully, not wis.h.i.+ng to discourage him, ”but not impossible by any means. It will take

some time, though.”

She went to the nursery, where Kay, devoted mommy that she was, had already ama.s.sed a considerable collection of Dr. Seuss and the like. Annie knew that Kay had been reading to Clark practically since the moment he was conceived. If Clark was reading yet, he had given no sign of it, but Annie wouldn't have been really surprised to find that he was. If maternal devotion had anything to do with it, Clark would be reading by the time he was a year old.

She returned to the living room with several large, colorful books. James was sitting on the black couch, waiting for her. She sat down next to him and opened the first book. ”Do you know the alphabet'”

She found that James had absolutely no knowledge of the alphabet, yet within half an hour he was able to fluently read the easy reader she had brought out. She was amazed to discover that he had only to see a word to memorize it. At last she closed the book and looked at him through narrowed eyes.

”You're not normal, James. You know that'”

James looked alarmed. ”I have a good memory.”

”Bull,” she said succinctly. ”Don't give me that. It's more than that, and you know it.”

James said nothing.

”It all begins to make sense now,” she went on. ”I'm not a big science fiction reader, but I've read a bit. Your people were some kind of super race, weren't they'”

James hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

Annie swallowed. The notion of eugenics gave her the creeps. The idea of creating people according to a preconceived notion of ideal humanity was way too reminiscent of the Aryan race ideas propagated by the n.a.z.is in the thirties and forties. But with the recent advances in cloning technology and the newly developed ability to map DNA, it wasn't nearly as farfetched a notion as it had been twenty years ago. Three centuries from now, who knew what scientists might be able to do by manipulating human genes'

She began to piece together what James had told her over the past two days. Somewhere along the line, she speculated, someone had figured out a way to create ideal people, perfect people like James. People who were physically and mentally superior. And, not surprisingly, there had been a backlash. She guessed that laws had been pa.s.sed, making the genetically engineered population slaves rather than people equal in the eyes of the law.

Normal people didn't take kindly to the notion that they were inferior, or suddenly obsolete. It made the way James' society had treated him a whole lot more understandable. Immoral as h.e.l.l, but understandable.

She remembered James' a.s.sertion that he couldn't have children. She was willing to bet his people had been forcibly sterilized as well.

And when they rebelled against such treatment, they had been eliminated.

”I'm sorry,” she murmured. ”I didn't know.”

”I should have told you earlier,” James said stiffly. ”I simply didn't want to see the expression in your eyes when you realized I was created rather than born.”

Annie shook her head. ”It isn't your fault someone messed around with your genes, James. Just because you came out of a test tube doesn't make you less human.” She looked at him and smiled wanly. ”If anything, it makes you more human. Superhuman, if you will. I guess that's why people in your society had a hard time dealing with it.”

James looked blank. ”A test tube'”

Evidently that was another term that hadn't stood up over three centuries. ”I just meant that an artificially created human is still human.” She shrugged. ”We have test tube babies here, too. Sometimes, when a woman can't get pregnant any other way, they fertilize one of her eggs out of utero and then implant it somehow. I don't know the specifics, but I do know that a baby created that way is just as human as one made the more usual way.”

James hesitated, almost imperceptibly. ”You are remarkably tolerant.”

”On the flip side--” Annie shrugged. ”You may not like my saying this, but I can see why the people in your society freaked out. It can't be easy, finding yourself in compet.i.tion with perfect people.”

James lowered his lashes. They were, like the rest of him, totally unbelievable, dark gold and longer than any she'd seen before. She wondered if someone had actually gone to the trouble of engineering genes for fabulously long eyelashes. If so, that unknown scientist must have had way too much time on his or her hands.

”I am not perfect,” he said.

”n.o.body's perfect, James. But your people must have come a lot closer to it than the rest of us.”

She took the book from his hands and put it on the coffee table. ”Let's forget reading for now,” she said gently, knowing from his expression that he was thinking of his past. His past, her future. ”Why don't we listen to some music' Do you like cla.s.sical music'”

He tilted his head. ”Cla.s.sical music' Do you mean music like the Beatles'”

She grinned. ”No, although they're pretty good too. I mean, you know, Bach and Beethoven. Old guys like that.” She opened Kay's entertainment center, which was, predictably, black, and started looking through the CDs, which were arranged neatly by composer and artist. ”How about some Vivaldi'”

James shrugged.

”I hope Vivaldi is known in your century.”

”Perhaps it is. I do not believe the family I belonged to was a particularly musical one.” He raised his eyebrows as she removed the CD carefully from its case. Kay would have a cow if she got a fingerprint on it. ”What is that'”

”A CD.” She stood up and walked back across to the couch, offering it for his inspection. He took it, holding it by the edges just as she had. He studied it carefully, turning it in the light and admiring the rainbow colors that danced across it.

”What is it for'”