“How long do you have?”

He stood and stared at her, shocked. “I’m not dying, Mother.”

“All his life, my son has been working for his supreme moment. Sounds to me like it’s come, Verge.”

“That’s crazier than horseshit.”

“I’ll throw what you’ve told me right back at you, Son. I’m not a genius, but I’m not a brick wall, either. You tell me you’ve made intelligent germs, and I’ll tell you right now… Anyone who’s ever sanitized a toilet or cleaned a diaper pail would cringe at the idea of germs that think. What happens when they fight back, Verge? Tell your old mother that.”

There was no answer. He wasn’t sure there was even a viable subject in their discussion; nothing made sense. But he could feel his stomach tensing.

He had performed this ritual before, getting into trouble and then coming to his mother, uneasy and uncertain, not sure precisely what sort of trouble he was in. With uncanny regularity, she had seemed to jump onto a higher plane of reasoning and identify his problems, laying them out for him so they became unavoidable. This was not a service that made him love her any more, but it did make her invaluable to him.

He stood and reached down to pat her hand. She turned it and gripped his hand in hers. “You’re going now,” she said.

“Yes.”

“How long do we have, Vergil?”

“What?” He couldn’t understand it, but his eyes suddenly filled with tears and he began to tremble.

“Come back to me, if you can,” she said.

Terrified, he grabbed his suitcase—packed the night before—and ran down the steps to the Volvo, throwing open the trunk and tossing it in. He rounded the car and caught his knee on the rear bumper. Pain surged, then dropped off rapidly. He climbed into the bucket seat and started the engine.

His mother stood on the porch, silk gown flowing in the slight morning breeze, and Vergil waved at her as he pulled the car away. Normality. Wave at your mother. Drive away.

Drive away, knowing that your father never existed, and that your mother was a witch, and what did that make you?

He shook his head until his ears rang, somehow managing to keep the car going in a straight line down the street.

A white ridge lay across the back of his left hand, like a tiny thread glued to the skin with mucilage.

An uncharacteristic summer storm had left the sky ragged with clouds, the air cool, and the apartment’s bedroom window flecked with drops of water. The surf could be heard from four blocks away, a dull rumble topped with hiss. Vergil sat before his computer, heel of one hand resting against the edge of the keyboard, finger poised. On the VDT was a twisting, evolving molecule of DNA surrounded by a haze of protein. Flickering separations of the double helix’s phosphate-sugar backbones indicated high-speed intrusions by enzymes, spreading the molecule for transcription. Labeled columns of numbers marched along the bottom of the screen. He watched them without paying much attention.

He would have to talk with somebody soon—somebody besides his mother, and certainly besides Candice. She had moved in with him a week after he returned from his mother’s house, apparently intent on domesticity, cleaning up the apartment and fixing his meals.

Sometimes they shopped together, and that was enjoyable. Candice enjoyed helping Vergil pick out better clothes, and he went along with her, even though the purchases drained his already low bank account.

When she asked about things she didn’t like, his silences grew prolonged. She wondered why he insisted they make love in the dark.

She suggested they go to the beach, but Vergil demurred.

She worried about his spending time under the new lamps he had bought.

“Verge?” Candice stood in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a terrycloth robe embroidered with roses.

“Don’t call me that. My mother calls me that.”

“Sorry. We were going to ride up to the animal park. Remember?”

Vergil lifted his finger to his mouth and chewed on the nail. He didn’t seem to hear.

“Vergil?”

“I’m not feeling too well.”

“You never go out. That’s why.”

“Actually, I’m feeling fine,” he said, turning in his chair. He looked at her but offered no further explanation.

“I don’t understand.”

He pointed to the screen. “You’ve never let me explain it to you.”

“You get all crazy and I don’t understand you,” Candice said, her lip quivering.

“It’s more than I ever thought possible.”

“What, Vergil?”

“The concatenations. The combinations. The power.”

“Please, make sense.”

“I’m trapped. Seduced but hardly abandoned.”

“I didn’t just seduce you—”

“Not you, sweetums,” he said abstractedly. “Not you.”

Candice approached the desk slowly, as if the screen might bite. Her eyes were moist and she chewed her lower lip. “Honey.”

He jotted down numbers from the bottom of the screen.

“Vergil.”

“Hmm?”

“Did you do something at work, I mean, before you left, before we met?”

He swiveled his head around and looked at her blankly.

“Like with the computers? Did you get mad and screw up their computers?”

“No,” he said, grinning. “I didn’t screw them up. Screwed them over, maybe, but nothing they’ll ever notice.”

“Because I knew this guy once, he did something against the law and he started acting funny. He wouldn’t go out, he wouldn’t talk much, just like you.”

“What did he do?” Vergil asked, still jotting numbers.

“He robbed a bank.”

The pencil stopped. Their eyes met. Candice was crying.

“I loved him and I had to leave him when I found out,” she said. “I just can’t live with bad shit like that.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I was all ready to leave you a few weeks ago,” she said. “I thought maybe we’d done all we could together. But it’s just crazy. I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re crazy. Crazy smart, not crazy shit-headed like other guys. I’ve been thinking if we could just loosen up together, that it would be really wonderful. I’d listen to you when you explain things, maybe you could teach me about this biology and electronics stuff.” She indicated the screen. “I’d try to listen. I really would.”

Vergil’s mouth hung open slightly. He drew it shut and looked at the screen, blinking rapidly.

“I fell in love with you. When you were gone to visit your mother. Isn’t that weird?”

“Candice—”

“And if you’ve done something really awful, it’s going to hurt me now, not just you.” She backed away with her fist tucked under her chin, as if she were slowly hitting herself.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” Vergil said.

“I know. You’re not mean.”

“I’d explain everything to you, if I knew what was happening myself. But I don’t. I haven’t done anything they could send me to jail for. Nothing illegal.” Except tamper with the medical records.

“You can’t tell me something isn’t bothering you. Why can’t we just talk about it?” She pulled a folding chair from the closet and snicked it open a couple of yards from the desk, sitting on it with knees together and feet spread.

“I just said, I don’t know what it is.”

“Did you do something… to yourself? I mean, did you get some disease at the lab or something? I’ve heard that’s possible, doctors and scientists get diseases they’re working with.”

“You and my mother,” he said, shaking his head.

“We’re worried. Will I ever meet your mother?”

“Probably not for some time,” Vergil said.

“I’m sorry I…” She shook her head vigorously. “I just wanted to open up to you.”

“That’s all right,” he said.

“Vergil.”

“Yes?”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes,” he said, and surprised himself by meaning it, though he did not look away from the screen.

“Why?”

“Because we’re so much alike,” he said. He was not at all sure how he meant that; perhaps both were destined to be failures, or at least never amount to much—to Vergil that was the same thing as failure.