“Indeed,” I said, “if, by ‘less-fortunate consequences’ you mean that your endeavor has already caused the deaths of several people I care about, and almost killed me more than once. You know I’ll be outside the convention, protesting against H4H. And against your buddy Howard Wells.”
“Ind—” He stopped himself and laughed. “Of course. I know you’ve been working with E4E, and I gather you’re involved in Chimerica, as well, whatever that means.”
I didn’t comment on that one. Chimerica was a secretive organization dedicated to protecting chimeras. Rex had recently been a part of Chimerica in some way that was a mystery even to me, and pretty much all he could tell me about it was how he didn’t know what anyone else was doing. I’d had a brief encounter with them myself, but I wouldn’t say I was involved, even though a few months ago I had found out that my long-lost Aunt Dymphna—my namesake, whom I hadn’t seen since I was four or five—was actually the head of Chimerica. I was still trying to make sense of that, wondering if I should try to connect with her through the group, or, since I was living right where I’d always been and she hadn’t gotten in touch with me, if I should just leave it alone and pretend to forget about her.
“As I said,” Calkin continued, “we want a variety of viewpoints—from Plants, chimeras, and others—and a dialogue. We all come at this issue from different places, from secularists who think splicing is detrimental to public health to fundamentalists who think chimeras are harbingers of the end of the world. And you should know that while Howard Wells and I agree on some things, we disagree on many more. I certainly wouldn’t say we’re buddies.”
I thought about that for a few seconds, then told him I’d have to think some more. I spent the next hour at the library, reading up on Reverend Calkin.
Then I called Rex.
TWO
What?” Rex said when I told him about the call.
I could hear him sipping tea over the phone, and I’m pretty sure he did spit it out.
“So, what did you tell him?” he asked when he was done sputtering and coughing.
“I told him I had to think about it.”
“You’re thinking about it?”
I wasn’t surprised that Rex was surprised, or that he disapproved, at first. I had disapproved at first, too. But from what I’d read, Calkin didn’t seem too bad. I disagreed with most of what he said, but he at least seemed thoughtful, like he was trying, looking for a solution. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if there was a chance to ratchet back tension, and to help the people at H4H to see how wrong they were, I had to support that however I could. Of course, realizing I should go to the luncheon was a lot different from wanting to go. I pictured myself sitting there feeling totally inadequate and out of place in a room full of “clergy, scholars, lawyers, and activists,” half of them chimera-haters who probably hated me, too, and the others pro-chimera types—and chimeras, themselves—wondering what the hell I was doing there.
But despite all that, I said, “Yes, Rex, I am.”
“Do you think it’s safe?”
I told him what Calkin had said about quiet and discreet if not secret. “I think it’ll be at least as safe as standing out there protesting with E4E.”
Rex and I decided to meet at New Ground after work the next day to discuss it further.
Work, for me, was my internship with Marcella DeWitt. She split her time between a private office that, as far as I could tell, she hardly used, and an office at E4E headquarters, where she spent most of her time, and where I worked for her.
We’d actually had a bit of a rocky start. We first met the previous winter, when she represented Doc Guzman against a bogus murder charge. DeWitt and I disagreed about how best to defend him. I thought she was short-tempered and stubborn, and I’m pretty sure she thought similarly about me. But it was a desperate time, and neither of us was at our best. In the months since, we’d gotten to know each other better. And she’d actually gotten me thinking seriously about my future.
A year ago, the extent of my long-term goals was to attend Temple University with my best friend, Del Grainger. But Del was dead now, killed by his own father, Stan, who couldn’t deal with his son being a chimera. And as it turned out, Del had abandoned our college plans anyway.
Since he died, I’d found solace and some meaning in the fight to preserve chimera rights. And I’d found true friends in the chimera community. But I’d also been moving forward without a real plan, a long-term goal. I wanted to finish high school, of course. And go to college, probably. But beyond that, I didn’t have a clue—at least not until a few months ago, when the FBI had come by the house to question me about a militant chimera group called Chimera Liberation and Defense, or CLAD.
For some reason the FBI thought I had some connection to CLAD, which I totally did not—CLAD’s violent tactics disgusted me. But DeWitt had acted as my attorney, and I had been impressed by and grateful for her help. A few weeks later, she was arguing a chimera-rights case in federal court and a few of my friends and I went to watch and show our support. Truthfully, a lot of it went over my head, but DeWitt was a force of nature: smart, tough, sincere, and morally right.
Seeing her in action inspired me to consider a path like hers.
After her court adjourned, I asked a few vague questions about her career choices. DeWitt, being DeWitt, knew exactly what I was getting at. “Jimi,” she said, “why don’t you intern for me this summer? You won’t get paid much. But you’ll get a sense of what a career like this entails.”
In the few weeks that I’d been her intern, between all the filing and collating and answering the phone, I was able to shadow her and ask questions about her work—the E4E cases in particular. As we got to know each other better, I grew to respect her even more.
When I arrived for work the day after Calkin called, she looked up from her desk and immediately said, “Hi, Jimi. Something on your mind?”
I was kind of taken aback. “Why do you ask?”
She fought off a smile. “There is, isn’t there?”
I hated the thought that she could read me like that, and I made a mental note not to try to ever get anything past her. Then I told her about the invitation from Reverend Calkin.
“He asked you to attend his luncheon? That’s interesting,” she said. “Well, he’s not the worst of them.”
“No, but he’s still one of them. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
She sat back with a smile, tapping her chin with her pen. I realized I had just stepped into a teachable moment.
“What are your pros and cons?” she asked.
“Well, I’d feel nervous and awkward being there, but more important, I wouldn’t want to do anything that would make H4H look good, or make E4E look bad. I wouldn’t want to do anything that could be used to hurt the pro-chimera movement somehow.”
“I don’t see how simply talking with people trying to find common ground could do that. Do you?”
“No,” I said, feeling my shoulders relax a little. “I figure dialogue is probably good…right?”
“In general, yes, I should think so.”