"This boy is our most interesting case," Dr. O'Connor, the head of the Foster Home for Specially Talented Children was saying. "We've had other children with proven psychic abilities, but this boy blows them all to Hell. He is like nothing we've ever seen before. His abnormal IQ, extreme athletic prowess, incredible psychic abilities, almost super-human senses and cat-like agility, balance, and strength make him just what the military has been looking for. Unfortunately, the CIA and FBI also want him, and the five branches of the military can't agree about who should get him. We, meanwhile, would like to keep him for further study. This is why you are here. We need to know as much about him as soon as possible."
"So you haven't had him long," Dr. Zimmerhein postulated.
"No, only a few weeks. Before that he had been shipped from foster home to foster home, never staying in one place long, due to the 'eerie happenings' that seemed to follow him like a curse everywhere he went. It was reports of these that caught our interest."
"A shame for him to be uprooted once again," Dr. Zimmerhein mused, "such constant moving is likely to have a negative effect on his psyche."
"If you can convince Them of that, They're likely to let him stay with us a few years, to develop a sense of security. That's part of the reason you're here."
"Alright, moving on to why I'm here, I'd like to ask you a few questions. First of all, have you had the medics check him out? His physiological make-up could be abnormal, as well. There is a slightly odd look to him. This could very well be the next step in human evolution we're seeing here," Dr. Zimmerhein said as he watched the boy swim the entire length of the hundred-yard pool under water, coming up for breath only once before he reached the opposite side.
"No, he's only had a simple exam. He hasn't really been here long enough for more than that."
"Alright then, that's the first thing we'll concentrate on. Let's go set up the equipment now."
And down below in the pool room, the "next step in human evolution" looked up as the two left the room he shouldn't be able to see behind the one-way mirror.
*******
"This is ridiculous," David muttered as he pulled out the road-map stowed in one of the many storage compartments in his Tyrusian/Terran motorcycle, a hybrid, like himself. "The directions they gave me have got to be wrong. There's no way any idiot would put a foster home way out here in the middle of nowhere, not even the government."
The directions he was referring to were the directions Phil Stark had given him to the fifth stop on his list of possible places to find his brother. They had searched through the government's extensive computer databases of people (all of a sudden he was privy to the most fascinating secrets...) to find people who could possibly be his brother. They had then compiled a list, in order of most likely to least likely, the list he was now following. The first five places had been absolute dead-ends, and the people who were supposedly his brother were nothing like the specifications they had put in the database's search motive. His respect for the database was really beginning to wear thin, and he suspected he would never find his brother. There were three-hundred and twenty-seven stops he had to make, scattered all across the country, and he was only on his fifth. For all he knew, he would still be searching when the Tyrusian death-fleets came flying out of the sky, raining death, doom and destruction on his beloved Earth.
"Stop it!" he told himself sharply, "don't think such pessimistic thoughts! Of course we'll win...the good side always does." But truth was, he wasn't that convinced. And he was really worried about his father. he had just gotten him back--he didn't want to lose him again, not like...
Suddenly he veered sharply off towards the side of the road as his vision blurred with the sharp, familiar sting of tears trying to escape the prison he stubbornly kept them in. But he merely blinked them away. He refused to cry, not now, not when he had a brother to find. A brother was more family, and that was good, right?
But he wasn't sure, and he hated himself for it. He had always wanted a brother, but now--now he wasn't so sure. His life was in so much turmoil right now, and he just didn't know. He didn't know anything anymore. He knew part of it was jealousy--jealousy of another son to distract his father's attention away from just him. And of course, he had always wanted a brother, to love, to care for, to play with and wrestle with, to teach the things he loved to...but that was back when he had a family, and his life was certain. Now, though he had his father, he didn't really have a secure family, and he wasn't sure wether he would live to see tomorrow. It wasn't the simpler world he had longed to help raise a brother in anymore...and to think he had once tired of his simple world. How he longed to go back to it now... And of course there was the simple fact that his brother was almost full-grown, just two years younger than him--and they had never once laid eyes on each other.
He remembered when his father had first told him he had a brother. First the shock, then the hurt, and the betrayal...
*******
"David," his father had said, "you have a brother. I want you to find him."
For a moment he just couldn't speak. All this memories of all the times he had wished for a brother flashed before him now. How often he had waited for this moment--but not like this, not now. He had only had a few days to get to know his father, and already he had to drive this spike into their relationship.
"A brother?" he had managed to squeak out.
His father sighed heavily and looked down, before saying, "Yes, David. A brother. It happened like this..."
And his father had launched into the detailed story of the origins of his brother. It seems that Rafe had been worried about the fact that the Cale had only one child, only one heir to the throne, in a situation so precariously dangerous. when it came time for Cale to leave, he said as much to Cale, worried that Cale might not return, and although he didn't mention that, both men knew it was the case. Cale had to agree with Rafe's argument, for the sake of both planets. But he was leaving in days, and had no time to try for another, and so soon after the birth of the first. So Rafe had an idea, and Cale reluctantly gave his permission. Rafe was to wait two years, and if there was no word form Cale by then, he was to obtain some of Rita's DNA, without her noticing--it was merely a matter of innocently removing a hair form her shirt, and, together with Cale's DNA (with some help from a few deserter Tyrusian scientists they had met before David's birth), create a second child.
"Wait a minute," David interrupted, "you mean my brother is a thing, a construct? Something created in some sort of laboratory?"
"No, no," his father reprimanded him sharply, "wait a minute David, before you start jumping to conclusions. He was made the same way you were--he just wasn't lucky enough to grow in a womb, and be born. Instead he grew in an artificial womb, but otherwise he was made the same way you were. He's not your clone, and he's not a monster. He's your brother, the same as he would be created naturally--we just helped the procees get along without me, is all."
"Did Mom know?" David whispered, horrified.
"I'm sure she never suspected a thing," Cale said, and for a moment there was a flicker of some unimaginably deep emotion across is harsh face, "But I don't know what really happened, for I wasn't here. All I know is taht I'm sure Rafe did it, for he never went down on his word, and once he said he would do something, then by whatever it took, he would get it done.
"Now," Cale continued, " the idea was that this child would be placed with a nice family somewhere, who would raise him until he was needed. If I came back, Rafe knew where the child was. The problem is, I'm back, but..." Cale's voice and face clouded over with grief, but he managed to say, "Rafe isn't."
So that was his task now--find his brother. Easier said than done. and even if he found him--what if he was with a nice family somewhere? They wouldn't part with him. This quest was impossible, and meanwhile, he was missing time that could be spent with his father...
*******
"Alright, while we're waiting for the results of the blood scan, DNA analysis, and MRI scan, why don't you tell me some of the other things boy-wonder there can do," Dr. Zimmerhein said as he nodded towards the child, Ryll, lying perfectly still in the MRI tube.
"Well, let's see...he is quite artistic; he draws, paints, sculpts, in fact, he can do just about every art form or craft type he learns very well. But his best area is music. He is an excellent dancer--"
"I can imagine," Dr. Zimmerhein interrupted, "with his excellent physical health and balance, that unatural grace...oh...I'm sorry, do please continue."
"Yes, now where was I? Oh yes, the art form he truly excels in, and what he enjoys the most, is singing. Although Ryll is brilliant, and has a very scientific mind as well as being a mathematical genius, oddly enough, he wants to be a singer."
"Err...yes. It is hard to think of this child as having a real life, with dreams and loves and hates and fears like all the rest of us. It's sad, really. I pity him. So tell me--what can't this child do?"
"I don't know," Dr. O'Connor mused, "I've seen him do everything he puts his mind to."
*******
He couldn't make friends.
To lie perfectly still, as the strange new doctor had told him to, was really quite difficult. He was an active person. To accomplish this he had to think, like he did at night when he was supposed to be sleeping but couldn't. But such deep thinking often brought depressing thoughts he kept buried deep down to the surface. And their exposure hurt.
He couldn't make friends. Not even here, surrounded by more children like himself--freaks--he couldn't make a single friend. Oh, not for lack of trying. He tried, it's just that they were so different from him. In the end, it never worked out. Everyone was too different. He was alone. Utterly and completely alone. He always had been, but it had never bothered him this much before. Now, at fifteen, he wanted friends. He wanted companionship, he wanted love. A familyu, perhaps, or a girlfriend. Or a single best friends he could tell all his secrets, and show all his discoveries, and share his troubles with. Someone who would understand.
But it was never to be, for he was completely Alone. An so he stared at himself in the reflective surface of the MRI scanner, and in his grief his the muscles in his eyes dilated, widening his pupils to the very edges of his eyes, making them inky black pools like a starless night. And, seeing again what he knew by rights he shouldn't be able to do, he held himself tighter and wept.
*******
Dr. Zimmerhein was about to scold the fifteen year-old for moving, but when he saw what the MRI had just previously recorded, he froze.
Dr. O'Connor had left, bored, so he had no one to share his discovery with. He wasn't sure he wanted to. Those huge, exotic eyes of Ryll's, to go with the odd, exotic name, had just done something impossible. Right clicking his mouse on the are dispalyed on the screen, he foze the process and zoomed in for a closer look.
Those eyes were not human. There was no record of anything like that, he was quite sure, in any animal at all. The closest thing he could think of was the pupils of a cat, which could do dramatic diolation and contraction almost instantaneously. But that was nothing compared to this. This was...alien. Yes, that's exactly what those huge eyes that dominated the face looked like--the eyes of an alien. Huge black pools of infinite depth, so deep one could be lost in them forever...
Then his computer beeped to get his attention, and started printing out the results of the blood test. Then another one beagn printing out the results of the DNA analysis. Running over to look at what was comingh out, he crossed himslef. Even scanning it breifly he knew what he was seeing. And it simply couldn't be. But it was. Grabbng the phine, he breifly considered who he should call first. Who should knwo, he asked himself?
But he already knew the answer. Everyone. And no one.
