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“Yes. Shame about how it all turned out,” another man said, as if they were talking about a failed garden instead of human beings. “Dr. Simpson was making progress with sterilization at the asylum before that unfortunate fire. He’ll need a new surgery now. The Supreme Court will say yea to Buck versus Bell—I’m sure of it. Then the state will be able to sterilize the unfit without interference.”
Sam could feel his anger rising. He wanted to throw over the chessboard and watch the pieces scatter. He wished Theta were here to burn the room down. He wanted to watch it go up in flames.
“But can you imagine the threat if those little Diviners had been allowed to come into their full power? The war certainly showed us what had to be done,” the cigar-smoking man said. “Oh, I’ve discarded, Charles.”
Sam wanted to stay and find out more, but his skin tingled and itched, a warning. Any minute now, he’d be visible. One of the chess players shifted in his seat, looking behind him.
“What is it, John?” his chess partner asked.
“I had the strangest feeling there was someone behind me, watching us. The brandy, I expect. I should call it a night.”
“Or you should have more brandy!”
Time to go. Quickly, Sam darted out of the room and tiptoed down the hall a safe distance. From the dark of a sitting nook, where Sam had stopped to scratch his itchy skin against the molding, he could still hear the men laughing. Sam was sick with anger: Their mothers had been chosen and experimented upon because they’d been considered expendable.
The war certainly showed us what had to be done. The cigar-smoking man’s comment haunted Sam. What had the schmuck meant by that? Every time it seemed they got a piece of the Project Buffalo puzzle, they found the puzzle itself was much bigger than they had ever imagined.
Sam stole into the hallway, hoping he could make it back to his room undetected. As he passed the empty soldiers’ room, he was seized by a strange feeling, something from so deep in memory it felt nearly like bone or breath. He took a step into the room. A tiny voice whispered: “Little Fox! Is it you?”
“Mama?” Sam called. He was answered only by the scratch of trees against the window and the boastful talk drifting out from Marlowe’s party.
But he could swear that for just a moment he had felt the unmistakable presence of his mother.
THE ÜBERMENSCH
The next day at afternoon tea, Jake Marlowe swept into the dining room. “I’m afraid Jericho is needed for some tests. But we’ll return him to you soon enough,” he announced.
“Can’t it wait?” Jericho asked. He wanted to be with Evie, not spend the rest of the day down in the basement laboratory like some rat in a cage.
“No. I’m afraid it can’t,” Marlowe said, and then he was gone again.
“Guess you better do what Dad says,” Sam gloated.
Evie kicked at him under the table, but Henry got there first.
Once Jericho was gone, Sam told Henry and Ling about his night with the Founders Club.
“You could’ve been in real trouble if they’d caught you,” Ling said.
Sam smirked and hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “Me? I’m too good to get caught. But you shoulda heard these chumps talking about Project Buffalo. They wanted to experiment on people like us, so-called mutts. People they thought couldn’t fight back. Because to them, we weren’t ‘real Americans.’ If something went wrong, they didn’t care.”
“This is why I never leave the city. Bad things happen in country houses. Just look at all of literature,” Henry said. “Uh-oh. Ling is wearing her serious face.”
“I always wear my serious face,” Ling said. “I was just wondering something. You grew up rich, Henry. How did your mother get included in this experiment?”
“We were well off, not rich.”
“Why do rich people always pretend they’re not rich?” Ling said.
“I know that Mama had three miscarriages before me, and my father saw it as her personal failure to produce,” Henry said, nearly spitting out the last word. “It only worsened her depression. She saw plenty of doctors. Now that I remember, I overheard Flossie telling a friend that my father had taken Mama to New York to see a ‘special doctor.’ It’s possible that’s how she made it into the program. If so, between my overbearing father and her delicate mental state, she would’ve been in no condition to refuse. You still have your serious face on, Ling.”
Ling nodded. “That’s because I have a serious question: What do you do with a little army of very powerful Diviner ‘mutts’ if you don’t like or trust those people to start with?”
Down in the lab, Marlowe rolled up his sleeves and readied a syringe of serum. This formula was different—thicker and a midnight blue. “What’s that?” Jericho asked.
“I’ve made some modifications. We’re going to really give it to you today, Jericho. No half measures. Let’s see what we get with the full serum,” Marlowe crowed as the nurse and a doctor readied the room.
“Have you tried this on anybody else?” Jericho asked. He tried not to show how frightened he was as the nurse tied tubing around his biceps and swabbed alcohol across the hollow of his arm.
