Music Makers by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page A

to him.
    “Let’s go,” Nathan said. “Joey, how does McDonald’s sound? One or two burgers?”

    Several hours later Ashley and Nathan were sitting on a terrace overlooking the swimming pool where Joey was playing with a few other kids. Ashley and Nathan both had a tall cold vodka with bitter lemon. She felt they both deserved and needed it.
    “What was all the yelling about?” Ashley asked. It was the first chance they’d had to talk. They had gone to McDonalds, then to a big box store to buy some clothes, including a swimsuit, for Joey. Nathan and Joey were registered in the same motel Ashley was in.
    “First,” Nathan said, grinning slightly, “they accused me of hiring a child actor. Then trying to pass my own son off as Joey. Dad said they could have me arrested for something or other, or was I trying to kill my mother with one foul trick after another. Then it got ugly.” He laughed and took a sip of his drink.
    Joey was on the high drive. He didn’t dive off, he cannon balled, landed with a tremendous splash, and bobbed up like a cork.
    “Anyway,” Nathan went on, “I reminded them that a simple DNA test would settle the question of parents. Then it was a matter of publicity, a new media circus even worse than the first one. Careers destroyed, and so on.”
    His father was a high executive in a firm that supplied electronic equipment to the government, and of course Ashley’s father was a distinguished university professor. Nathan was enjoying himself, Ashley realized, as he said, “They would both be ruined by a new round of tabloid-type publicity. The farm would be overrun by the curious, photographers, television crews, flying saucer nuts . . . They’d dog our footsteps day and night and Joey would be at risk. Except,” he added dryly, “he didn’t call him by name, just ‘the boy.’ My mother could go into another breakdown with the stress. You get the drift.”
    She nodded. They wanted Joey to go back to wherever he had been for seventeen years. “So what’s the solution?”
    “We’ll have a conference tomorrow, after we’ve all had a little time to think about it. My conference, Ashley, my terms. Or I go public. And Mother, at age sixty, will have to explain to her garden club friends how it happens that suddenly she’s a new mother to a seven-year old feisty boy.”
    He laughed. “I want the farm house and three or four acres around it. They’ll probably get Grampa declared incompetent and sell the rest of the farm. Dad will have to arrange for the right papers for Joey, school, medical records, birth certificate, whatever is needed. He has connections, he can manage that. And I’ll become Joey’s father. No publicity. They’ll come around to accepting a grandson. That’s not going to be a problem as long as they can avoid the publicity.”
    Joey was on the high dive again. They watched him jump off.
    “You want to live on the farm?” she asked then.
    “Not exactly. I intend to set up a research facility. I’ll get in touch with my old physics instructor and, believe me, he’ll jump at the chance to join me.” His grin was very much like Joey’s then, with the same kind of shining eyes. “Will you help?”
    “How?”
    “Be a second parent, or aunt or something. But aside from that, we’re going to need a good computer person, a research assistant, something of that sort. Someone who really knows the truth. You.”
    She remembered how Joey had slipped his hand into hers as they approached the stunned and disbelieving family. She suspected that Nathan was going to be very busy for years to come, and Joey would need a hand again and again. Not the hand of a paid care taker, her hand. Besides, she really was a good computer geek. She nodded. “I’ll help. Joey’s going to need an aunt. And a lot of tutoring to catch up with seventeen lost years before school starts again. What about the research?”
    “I’ll put a heavy duty gate on the cave entrance, and we’ll