“She’s a miracle,” Mitch said.

The girl tried to turn her head at the sound of his voice, opened her eyes, tried to locate him.

“Your daddy,” Kaye said. Colostrum dribbled thick and yellow from her nipple. The girl dropped her head and fastened on again with a little push from Kaye’s finger. “She lifted her head,” Kaye said in wonder.

“She’s beautiful,” Sue said. “Congratulations.”

Felicity spoke to Sue for a moment while Kaye and Mitch and the baby filled the spot of solar brightness beneath the surgical lamp.

“She’s here,” Kaye said.

“She’s here,” Mitch affirmed.

“We’ve done it.”

“You sure did,” Mitch said.

Again, their daughter lifted her head, opened her eyes, this time wide.

“Look at that,” Chambers said. Felicity bent over, nearly knocking heads with Sue.

Mitch met his daughter’s stare with fascination. She had tawny brown pupils flecked with gold. He leaned forward. “Here I am,” he said to the baby.

Kaye reached out to show her the nipple again, but the baby resisted, head bobbing with surprising strength.

“Hello, Mitch,” his daughter said, her voice like the mewing of a kitten, not much more than a squeak, but very clear.

The hair rose on the back of his neck. Felicity Galbreath gasped and backed away as if stung.

Mitch pushed against the edge of the bed and stood. He shivered. The infant resting on Kaye’s breast seemed for a moment more than he could stand; not just unexpected, but wrong. He wanted to run. Still, he could not take his eyes off the little girl. Heat rose into his chest. The shape of her tiny face came into a kind of focus. She seemed to be trying to speak again, her lips pushing out and drawing to one side, small and pink. A milky yellow bubble appeared in the corner of her mouth. Small dapples of fawn-color, lion-color, flushed across her cheeks and brows.

Her head rolled and she stared up at Kaye’s face. A puzzled frown wrinkled the space between her eyes.

Mitch Rafelson reached with his big, raw-boned hand and callused fingers to touch the little girl. He bent over to kiss Kaye, then the baby, and stroked her temple with great gentleness. With a touch of his thumb, he turned her rose-colored lips back to the rich nipple. She gave a breathy sigh, a small whistling sound, and with a squirm, fastened onto her mother’s teat and suckled vigorously. Her tiny hands flexed perfect golden-brown fingers.

Mitch called Sam and Abby in Oregon and told them the news. He was barely able to focus on their words; his father’s trembling voice, his mother’s piercing squeal of joy and relief. They spoke for a while and then he told them he could barely stand. “We need to sleep,” he said.

Kaye and the baby were already asleep. Chambers told him they would stay there for two more days. Mitch asked for a bunk to be brought into the room, but Felicity and Sue persuaded him that everything would be all right.

“Go on home and rest,” Sue said. “She’ll be fine.”

Mitch shifted uncertainly on his feet. “They’ll call if there’s any trouble?”

“We’ll call,” Mary Hand said as she walked past with a bag oflinens.

“I’ll have two friends stay outside the clinic for the day,” Jack said.

“I need a place to stay tonight,” Felicity said. “I want to check them over tomorrow.”

“Stay in our house,” Jack suggested.

Mitch’s legs wobbled as he walked with them from the clinic to the Toyota.

In the trailer, he slept through the afternoon and evening. When he awoke, it was twilight. He knelt on the couch and stared out the wide picture window at the scrub and gravel and distant hills.

Then he showered, shaved, dressed. Looked for more things Kaye and the baby might need that had been forgotten.

Looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.

Wept.

Walked back to the clinic alone, in the lovely gloaming. The air was clean and clear and carried smells of sage and grass and dust and water from a low creek. He passed a house where four men were removing an engine from an old Ford, using an oak tree and a chain hoist. The men nodded at him, looked away quickly. They knew who he was; they knew what had happened. They were not comfortable with either him or the event. He picked up his pace. His eyebrows itched, and now his cheeks. The mask was very loose. Soon it would come off. He could feel his tongue against the sides of his mouth; it felt different. His head felt different.

More than anything, he wanted to see Kaye again, and the baby, the girl, his daughter, to make sure it was all real.

88

Arlington, Virginia

The wedding party spread out over much of the half-acre backyard. The day was warm and misty, alternating patches of sun and light overcast. Mark Augustine stood in the reception line beside his bride for forty minutes, smiling, shaking hands, giving polite hugs. Senators and congressional representatives walked through the line, chatting politely. Men and women in unisex black-and-white livery carried trays of champagne and canapes over the golf-green manicured lawn. Augustine looked at his bride with a fixed smile; he knew what he felt inside, love and relief and accomplishment, all slightly chilled. The face he showed to the guests, to the few reporters who had picked winning tickets in the press pool lottery, was calm, warmly loving, dutiful.

Something had occupied his mind all day, however, even through the wedding ceremony. He had flubbed his simple lines of declaration, provoking mild laughter in the front rows in the chapel.

Babies were being born alive. In the quarantine hospitals, in specially appointed Taskforce community clinics, and even in private homes, new babies were arriving.

The possibility that he was wrong had occurred to him lightly, in passing, a kind of itch, until he heard that Kaye Lang’s baby had been born alive, delivered by a doctor working from emergency bulletins issued by the Centers for Disease Control, the very same epidemiological study team that had been put in place at his orders. Special procedures, special precautions; the babies were different.

So far, twenty-four SHEVA infants had been dropped off at community clinics by single mothers or parents the Task-force had not been tracking.

Anonymous, alive foundlings, now under his care.

The reception line came to an end. Feet aching in the tight black dress shoes, he hugged his bride, whispered in her ear, and motioned for Florence Leighton to join him in the main house.

“What did Allergy and Infectious Diseases send us?” he asked. Mrs. Leighton opened the briefcase she had carried all day and handed him a fresh fax page.

“I’ve been waiting for an opportunity,” she said. “The president called earlier, sends his best wishes, and wants you at the White House sometime this evening, earliest convenience.”

Augustine read the fax. “Kaye Lang had her baby,” he said, looking up at her, eyebrows peaking.

“So I heard,” Mrs. Leighton said. Her expression was professional, attentive, and revealed nothing.

“We should send her congratulations,” Augustine said.

“I’ll do that,” Mrs. Leighton said.

Augustine shook his head. “No, you won’t,” he said. “We still have a course to follow.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Tell the president I’ll be there by eight.”

“What about Alyson?” Mrs. Leighton asked.

“She married me, didn’t she?” Augustine answered. “She knows what she’s getting into.”