Transmission Read online

  “It will be all right,” his mother said. She didn’t sound as though she believed it. She took hold of Kevin’s arm as they made their way into the house, but it felt more like Kevin was supporting her.

  “It will be,” Kevin replied, because he suspected that his mother needed to hear it even more than he did. It might have helped if it were true.

  They went inside, and it felt almost wrong to do anything after that, as though doing normal things would have been a kind of betrayal, after the news Dr. Markham had given them. Kevin put a frozen pizza in the oven, while in the background, he could hear his mother sobbing on the sofa. He started to go to comfort her, but two things stopped him. The first was the thought that his mother probably wouldn’t want him to. She had always been the strong one, the one looking after him even after his father left when he was just a baby.

  The second was the vision.

  He saw a landscape beneath a sky that seemed more purple than blue, the trees beneath oddly shaped, with fronds that reminded Kevin of the palm trees on the beaches, but trunks that twisted in ways palm trees never did. The sky looked as though the sun was setting, but the sun looked wrong somehow. Kevin couldn’t work out how, because he hadn’t spent time looking at the sun, but he knew it wasn’t the same.

  In one corner of his mind, numbers pulsed, over and over.

  He was walking across a space covered with reddish sand now, and could feel his toes sinking into it. There were creatures there, small and lizard-like, that scuttled away when he came too close to them. He looked around…

  …and the world dissolved into flames.

  Kevin woke up on the kitchen floor, the oven’s timer beeping to tell him the pizza was ready, the smell of burning food dragging him off the floor and over to the oven before his mother had to do it. He didn’t want her to see him like this, didn’t want to give her even more reasons to worry.

  He took the pizza out, cut it into slices, and took them into the living room. His mother was on the couch, and although she’d stopped crying, her eyes were red. Kevin put the pizza down on the coffee table, sitting beside her and switching on the TV so they could at least pretend that things were normal.

  “You shouldn’t have to do this,” his mother said, and Kevin didn’t know if she meant the pizza or everything else. Right then, it didn’t matter.

  Still the numbers hung in his head: 23h 06m 29.283s, −05° 02′ 28.59.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kevin wasn’t sure he’d ever felt as tired as he did when he and his mother drove into the school’s parking lot. The plan was to try to keep going as normal, but he felt as if he might fall asleep at any moment. That was a long way from normal.

  That was probably because of the treatments. There had been a lot of treatments in the last few days. His mother had found more doctors, and each one had a different plan for trying to at least slow things down. That was what they said, every time, the words making it clear that even that would be something special, and that actually stopping things was something they couldn’t hope for.

  “Have a good day at school, honey,” his mother said. There was something false about the brightness of it, a brittle edge that said just how hard she was having to try in order to produce a smile. Kevin knew she was making an effort for him, and he did his best, too.

  “I’ll try, Mom,” he assured her, and he could hear that his own voice didn’t sound natural either. It was as if both of them were playing roles because they were afraid of the truth underneath them. Kevin played his because he didn’t want his mother crying again.

  How many times had she cried now? How many days had it been since they’d been to see Dr. Markham the first time? Kevin had lost track. There had been a day or two off school sick, before it had become obvious that neither of them wanted that. Then there had been this: school interspersed with tests and attempts at therapies. There had been injections and blood tests, supplements because his mom had read online that they might help, and health food that was a long way from pizza.

  “I just want things to be as normal as possible,” his mother said. Neither of them mentioned that on a normal day, Kevin would have taken the bus to school, and they wouldn’t have had to worry about what was normal or not.

  Or that on a normal day, he wouldn’t be hiding what was wrong with him, or feeling grateful that his closest friend went to a different school after the last time he and his mom had moved, so that she wouldn’t have to see any of this. He hadn’t called Luna in days now, and the messages were building up on his phone. Kevin ignored them, because he couldn’t think of how to answer them.

  Kevin could feel the eyes on him from the moment he went inside the school. The rumors had been going around now, even if no one knew for sure what was wrong with him. He could see a teacher ahead, Mr. Williams, and on a normal day Kevin would have been able to walk past him without even attracting a moment of attention. He wasn’t one of the kids the teachers kept a close eye on because they were always doing something wrong. Now, the teacher stopped him, looking him up and down as if expecting signs that he might die at any moment.

  “How are you feeling, Kevin?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Williams,” Kevin assured him. It was easier to be fine than to try to explain the truth: how he was worried about his mother, and he was tired all the time from the attempts at treatment, how he was scared about what was going to happen next.

  How the numbers were still going around in his head.

  23h 06m 29.283s, −05° 02′ 28.59. They were there at the back of his mind, squatting like a toad that wouldn’t move, impossible to forget, impossible to ignore, no matter how much Kevin tried to follow his mother’s instructions to forget them.

  “Well, just let us know if you need anything,” the teacher said.

  Kevin still wasn’t sure how to reply to that. It was one of those kind things that people said that was kind of useless at the same time. The one thing he needed was the thing they couldn’t give him: to undo all of this; for things to be normal again. Teachers knew a lot of things, but not that.

  Still, he did his best to pretend to be normal all the way through his math class, and through most of history after that. Ms. Kapinski was telling them about some early European history, which Kevin wasn’t sure was actually on any kind of test, but which had apparently been what she majored in at college, and so seemed to show up more than it should.

  “Did you know that most of the Roman remains found in Northern Europe aren’t actually Roman?” she said. Kevin generally liked Ms. Kapinski’s classes, because she wasn’t afraid to wander off the point and tell them about whatever fragments of the past entered her head. It was a reminder of just how much there had been in the world before any of them.

  “So they’re fake?” Francis de Longe asked. Ordinarily, Kevin might have been the one asking it, but he was enjoying the chance to be quiet, almost invisible.

  “Not exactly,” Ms. Kapinski said. “When I say they aren’t Roman, I mean that they’re remains left behind by people who had never been near what is now Italy. They were the local populations, but as the Romans advanced, as they conquered, the local people realized that the best way to do well was to fit in with Roman ways. The way they dressed, the buildings they lived in, the language they spoke, they changed everything to make it clear which side they were on, and because it gave them a better chance of good positions in the new order.” She smiled. “Then, when there were rebellions against Rome, one of the keys to being part of it was not using those symbols.”

  Kevin tried to imagine that: the same people in a place shifting who they were as the political tide changed, their whole being changing depending on who ruled. He thought it might be a bit like being in one of the popular crowds at school, trying to wear the right clothes and say the right things. Even so, it was hard to imagine, and not just because images of impossible landscapes continued to filter through at the back of his mind.

  That was
probably the only good thing about what was wrong with him: the symptoms were invisible. It was also the scary thing in a way. There was this thing killing him, and if people didn’t know about it already, they would never find out. He could just sit there and no one would ever—

  Kevin felt the vision coming, rising up through him like a kind of pressure building through his body. There was the rush of dizziness, the feeling of the world swimming away as he connected with something… else. He started to stand to ask if he could be excused, but by then, it was already too late. He felt his legs giving way and he collapsed.

  He was looking at the same landscapes he remembered from before, the sky the wrong shade, the trees too twisted. He was watching the fire sweep through it, blinding and bright, seeming to come from everywhere at once. He’d seen all of that before. Now, though, there was a new element: a faint pulse that seemed to repeat at regular intervals, precise as a ticking clock.

  Some part of Kevin knew a clock was what it had to be, just as he knew by instinct that it was counting down to something, not just marking the time. The pulses had the sense of getting subtly more intense, as if building up to some far-off crescendo. There was a word in a language he shouldn’t have understood, but he did understand it.

  “Wait.”

  Kevin wanted to ask what he was supposed to be waiting for, or how long, or why. He didn’t, though, partly because he wasn’t sure who he was supposed to ask, and partly because almost as suddenly as the moment had come, it passed, leaving Kevin rising up from darkness to find himself lying on the floor of the classroom, Ms. Kapinski standing over him.

  “Just lie still a moment, Kevin,” she said. “I’ve sent for the school medic. Hal will be here in a minute.”

  Kevin sat up in spite of her instructions, because he’d come to know what this felt like by now.

  “I’m fine,” he assured her.

  “I think we should let Hal be the judge of that.”

  Hal was a big, round former paramedic who served to make sure that the students of St. Brendan’s School came through whatever medical emergencies they suffered. Sometimes, Kevin suspected that they did it because the thought of the medic’s idea of care made them ignore the worst of injuries.

  “I saw things,” Kevin managed. “There was a planet, and a burning sun, and a kind of message… like a countdown.”

  In the movies, someone would have insisted on contacting somebody important. They would have recognized the message for what it was. There would have been meetings, and investigations. Someone would have done something about it. Outside of the movies, Kevin was just a thirteen-year-old boy, and Ms. Kapinski looked at him with a mixture of pity and mild bewilderment.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s probably normal to see all kinds of things if you’re having this sort of… episode.”

  Around them, Kevin could hear the muttering from the others in his class. None of it made him feel better.

  “…just fell down and started twitching…”

  “…I heard he was sick, I hope you can’t catch it…”

  “…Kevin thinks he sees planets…”

  The last one was the one that hurt. It made it sound as though he were going crazy. Kevin wasn’t going crazy. At least, he didn’t think he was.

  Despite his best attempts to insist that he was fine, Kevin still had to go with Hal when the medic came. Had to sit in the medic’s office while he shone lights in Kevin’s eyes and asked questions about a condition so rare he obviously had no more clue than Kevin did what was going on.

  “The principal wanted to see us once I was sure you were okay,” he said. “Do you feel up to walking to his office, or should we ask him to come here?”

  “I can walk,” Kevin said. “I’m fine.”

  “If you say so,” Hal said.

  They made their way to the principal’s office, and Kevin almost wasn’t surprised to find that his mother was there. Of course they would have called her in for a medical emergency, of course she would be there if he collapsed, but that wasn’t good, not when she was supposed to be at work.

  “Kevin, are you okay?” his mother asked as soon as he arrived, turning to him and drawing him into a hug. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Kevin said.

  “Ms. McKenzie, I’m sure we wouldn’t have called you in if it weren’t serious,” the principal said. “Kevin collapsed.”

  “I’m fine now,” Kevin insisted.

  It didn’t seem to make any difference how many times he said that, though.

  “Plus,” the principal said, “it seems that he was pretty confused when he came around. He was talking about… well, other planets.”

  “Planets,” Kevin’s mother repeated. Her voice was flat when she said that.

  “Ms. Kapinski says it disrupted her class quite a bit,” the principal said. He sighed. “I’m wondering if maybe Kevin might be better off staying at home for a while.”

  He said it without looking at Kevin. There was a decision being made there, and although Kevin was at the heart of it, it was clear he didn’t actually get a say.

  “I don’t want to miss school,” Kevin said, looking at his mother. Surely she wouldn’t want him to either.

  “I think what we have to ask,” the principal said, “is if, at this point, school is really the best thing Kevin can be doing with the time he has.”

  It was probably intended to be a kind way of putting it, but all it did was remind Kevin of what the doctor had said. Six months to live. It didn’t seem like enough time for anything, let alone to have a life in. Six months’ worth of seconds, each one ticking away in a steady beat that matched the countdown in his head.

  “You’re saying that there’s no point to my son being in school because he’ll be dead soon anyway?” his mother snapped back. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, of course not,” the principal said, hurriedly, raising his hands to placate her.

  “That’s what it sounds like you’re saying,” Kevin’s mother said. “It sounds as though you’re freaked out by my son’s illness as much as the kids here.”

  “I’m saying that it’s going to be hard to teach Kevin as this gets worse,” the principal said. “We’ll try, but… don’t you want to make the most of the time you have left?”

  He said that in a gentle tone that still managed to cut right to Kevin’s heart. He was saying exactly what his mother had thought, just in gentler words. The worst part was that he was right. Kevin wasn’t going to live long enough to go to college, or get a job, or do anything that he might need school to prepare for, so why bother being there.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm.

  That seemed to be enough of an argument to convince his mother, and just that told Kevin how serious this all was. On any other occasion, he would have expected her to fight. Now it seemed that the fight had been sucked out of her.

  They went out to the car in silence. Kevin looked back at the school. The thought hit him that he probably wouldn’t be coming back. He hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

  “I’m sorry they called you at work,” Kevin said as they sat in the car. He could feel the tension there. His mom didn’t turn the engine on, just sat.

  “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just… it was getting easy to pretend that nothing was wrong.” She sounded so sad then, so deeply hurt. Kevin had gotten used to the expression that meant she was trying to keep from crying. She wasn’t succeeding.

  “Are you okay, Kevin?” she asked, even though by then, he was the one holding onto her, as tightly as he could.

  “I’m… I wish I didn’t have to leave school,” Kevin said. He’d never thought he would hear himself say that. He’d never thought that anyone would say that.

  “We could go back in,” his mother said. “I could tell the principal that I’m going to bring you back here tomorrow, and every day after that, until…”

/>   She broke off.

  “Until it gets too bad,” Kevin said. He screwed his eyes tightly shut. “I think maybe it’s already too bad, Mom.”

  He heard her hit the dashboard, the dull thud echoing around the car.

  “I know,” she said. “I know and I hate it. I hate this disease that’s taking my little boy from me.”

  She cried again for a little while. In spite of his attempts to stay strong, Kevin did too. It seemed to take a long time before his mother was calm enough to say anything else.

  “They said you saw… planets, Kevin?” she asked.

  “I saw it,” Kevin said. How could he explain what it was like? How real it was?

  His mother looked over, and now Kevin had the sense of her struggling for the right words to say. Struggling to be comforting and firm and calm, all at the same time. “You get that this isn’t real, right, honey? It’s just… it’s just the disease.”

  Kevin knew that he ought to understand it, but…

  “It doesn’t feel like that,” Kevin said.

  “I know it doesn’t,” his mother said. “And I hate that, because it’s just a reminder that my little boy is slipping away. All of this, I wish I could make it go away.”

  Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. He wished it would go away too.

  “It feels real,” Kevin said, even so.

  His mother was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice had the brittle, barely holding it together quality that only arrived since the diagnosis, but now had become far too familiar.

  “Maybe… maybe it’s time we took you to see that psychologist.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dr. Linda Yalestrom’s office wasn’t anywhere near as medical looking as all the others Kevin had been in recently. It was her home, for one thing, in Berkeley, with the university close enough that it seemed to back up her credentials as surely as the certificates that were neatly framed on the wall.