I forgot myself, forgot that my son was crawling on the floor in the other room. I shouted something vile, and louder than I realized. Because of the earbuds, I didn’t hear Robin until he was tugging on my shirt. He startled me, and I jumped. He got flustered and defensive. Well, don’t just ignore me! What’s the matter?
“It’s nothing.” I took out my buds and stopped the app. “Just the news.”
Something bad? It’s something bad. You swore pretty hard.
I made a mistake. “It’s nothing, Robbie. Don’t worry.”
He sulked over dinner and slammed through the meal. But way too quickly, he seemed to forgive me. By the time I broke out the cocoa almonds, he was smiling again. I was stupid not to guess.
After we finished, he went back to his spot on the living room floor while I returned to my computer. I was tweaking one of my algorithms for volcanic eruptions on water worlds when a thumping came from across the house. I cursed again. It sounded like a small mammal had gotten into the walls of Robin’s bedroom and was making a nest between the studs. I’d never be able to get it out and save my house without sending my son into another spiral.
There was another thump, several more, too metronomic to be anything but human. It sounded like a plumber making serious mistakes. I went for a look.
The sound came from Robin’s bedroom. I opened the door and saw him curled up in the corner holding his Planetary Exploration Transponder and banging his head against the wall. It was a slow-motion, soft, exploratory head-slamming, like an experiment in final penance.
I rushed him, shouting. Before I could pull him away from the wall, he barreled to his feet, through my arms, and out of the room. I stopped only long enough to check the tablet. On the screen, a group of demented cows stumbled into each other. They’d lost control of their bodies. One of them slipped to the ground, lowing in confusion. The close-up cut to an aerial shot of a staggering animal mass hundreds of creatures wide.
The story was all over the net: brain contagion, tearing through Texas’s four and a half million head of cattle, spreading from feedlot to feedlot with industrial-scale efficiency. Robin had logged in to my account and found it, using my password that I never changed: his mother’s favorite bird, flying backward.
Screaming started up from outside, looping over the agonizing video. Stop! Enough! Stop! I ran from the room and outside. He was alone in the dark backyard. No threat anywhere, no one at all but my wailing child. He dropped like a deadweight the moment I reached him. His screams grew worse when I tried to embrace him. That’s enough. Stop. Stop!
I dropped to my knees and took his face. My own shouted whispers were half comfort, half muzzle. “Robbie. Hush. Don’t. It’ll be okay.”
That word okay drew a shriek that shattered me, so out of control, up close to my ear. I recoiled, and he broke free. He was across the yard and around the corner of the house before I could get to my feet. I chased him back inside. He was coiled again in the corner of his room, battering the wall with his brain. I broke through the doorway and threw myself between the wall and his skull. But he finished the moment I reached him. He slumped in my arms. A sound came out of him as awful as his screams. A long, low gurgle of defeat.
I cradled him and stroked his hair. He didn’t fight. Aly had stopped whispering in my ears, the moment I most needed her. My brain searched for something to say that wouldn’t make him lash out again. Every possibility felt inane. We lived in a place where feedlots were subsidized, but feedback was prohibited. I should never have brought him to visit this planet.
“Robbie. There are other places.”
He lifted his head to glare at me. His eyes were small and hard. Where?
His body went limp. The rage had cleaned him out. I let him lie a while longer. Then I got him up and into the kitchen, where I iced his forehead. In the bathroom, he washed and brushed his teeth in a stupor. The lump came on, plump and dark, a thousand-year egg set above the brow of his right eye.
He didn’t want to read or be read to. He violently rejected a trip through space. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Why did you hide it from me, Dad?
Because I was afraid of exactly what had happened. That was the honest answer, and still I hid. “I shouldn’t have.”
What’s going to happen?
“They’ll be put down. They probably already have been.”
Killed.
“Yes.”
Won’t it spread? With animals packed in like that? And getting moved around all over the place?
I told him I didn’t know. I do now.