Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Just went missing, left us like this.”

  “Don’t I know it, Gum.”

  “A hunnert years.”

  She went to another activist meeting, worked more on Paula Caradine. Before anything could happen, Eliot called her. His voice had the ultracontrolled monotone that a lot of lawyers used for something really serious.

  “Dee, I want you to see something. Meet me at the genemod evidence center in an hour. You know where it is?”

  “Of course I know where it is. Can you say—”

  “No.” He clicked off.

  The Genetic Modification Felony Actions Evidence Center for Greater New York was in Brooklyn. It was another bad air day; Dee wore her mask for the entire trip plus the fifteen minutes she hung around outside. No admittance to the heavily guarded building without five million authorizations. Finally Eliot showed up (“Another breakdown on the subway”), got them inside, and was shown to an e-locked room. Dee recognized the negative-pressure signs in this whole wing. Nothing, not even spores, could drift out. She and Eliot had changed into paper coveralls. They would have to go through decontamination to get out again.

  Eliot keyed the e-locked door and it opened.

  Dee gasped. Years of training couldn’t weigh against this. The single plant sat in the middle of the small room. A bush as tall as Dee’s shoulders, it had broad, very pale green leaves on woody branches. In the center of each leaf was a closed human eye. Eliot turned up the light and the eyes opened.

  Perri’s eyes.

  Each one was the startling blue-green that Dee had never seen on anyone else. Their pupils turned toward the light source. A hundred eyes, moving in unison, blind.

  “The evidence biologist explained it to me,” Eliot said. “The eyes are light-sensitive but they can’t actually see. They’re not wired up to any brain. There’s a human eye gene, ‘aniridia,’ that can be introduced onto animals in weird places, insect wings or legs, and they’ll grow extra eyes. Nobody knew you could put it into plants.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “It’s an art object,” Eliot said grimly. “A sculpture. Apparently the artist is well-known in the underground circles that traffic in these things. He’s in custody.”

  “Mike—”

  “Was the supplier, of course. The eyes were grown from the stem cells from Perri’s aborted fetus. Stem cells are easiest to grow into any organ. But the so-called artist is refusing to talk. On advice of attorney.”

  “Will he deal? If you offer enough?”

  “I can’t offer anything, Dee. It’s not my case. But no, I don’t think he’ll talk. More and more of these genemod illegals are being acquired by organized crime. The FBI and NYPD have just established a joint task force on illegals. The artist would rather face the court than face the mob.”

  “But it’s obvious these are Perri’s genes! They can do a DNA match!”

  “Why bother? You can’t prove she didn’t give Mike the tissue, or sell it to him. It doesn’t clear her at all. I just thought you ought to see that the chances of getting Mike on other charges have gone way up. He’s connected to the artist who’s connected to the mob, so Mike is going to get serious attention. They’ll get him if they can.”

  Dee faced him. “I don’t want revenge. I want Perri freed.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want revenge? Perri’s told me a bit about her childhood. You overprotected her, Dee. You made her feel the entire world is dangerous.”

  “It is.”

  “But you also taught her she can’t cope with it without you. That without you, she’s bound to screw up. And like a good daughter, she’s been proving you right ever since.”

  “She’s not my daughter, and—”

  “She might as well be. You were the only mother she had.”

  “You don’t know jack shit about it!”

  “I know what Perri’s told me.”

  Dee demanded, “You see her? A lot?”

  “Every chance I can. Don’t look like that, Dee. She’s not a child anymore, and as you just pointed out, you’re not her mother.”

  “Fuck you, Eliot. You’re fired. You’re not Perri’s attorney any more.”

  “That’s not your decision,” Eliot said.

  “I pay her bills!”

  “Not this one.” His gaze was steady.

  Dee strode toward the door. Going through it, she slapped off the light. The blue-green eyes on the pale leaves, Perri’s eyes, blinked and closed.

  “We’re hitting a farm tonight,” Paula said abruptly. “You can come along.”

  “I checked out, huh?” Dee said.

  “Why didn’t you mention that the bastards tried to kill you with a bio-weapon?”

  “I thought I’d give you something to research,” Dee said. She hid her surprise that “the group”—pretentiously, they had no other name—had turned up the attack in her apartment. They were better connected than she’d thought. No official police report had been filed.

  “We meet here at two a.m.,” Paula said. “Wear dark clothing that covers your arms and legs with at least three layers of cloth, and good boots. We’ll supply gloves and mask.”

  “Got it. Paula . . . thanks.”

  “I know how it is,” Paula said cryptically. Dee didn’t ask what she meant.

  Sixteen people, packed into two vans with blackened windows and an opaque shield between driver and passengers. No names, faces behind masks; Dee wouldn’t be able to identify anyone except Paula. They rode for at least forty minutes at variable speeds. When the van stopped, they could have been anywhere.

  “Stay in single file,” their “group leader” said. He led them through the darkness, one flashlight in the front of the line, off the road through a small woods, then across at least three open fields divided by strips of underbrush. Finally the line halted.

  The genemod farm was an acre lot of saplings. Sold as transplants, Dee guessed. Genemod illegals had learned not to fence or firewall their farms; it attracted too much aerial-surveillance attention. To Dee these saplings looked like any other stand of young trees. What were they genemod for? It didn’t matter. Their creation was the kind of irresponsible activity that had caused the Crisis, when one food crop after another had been wiped out by fast-growing, herbicide-resistant, genetically created “super-plants” with no natural enemies. The kind of irresponsible activity that had, in the end, caused most of the Midwest to endure the controlled burn. The kind of irresponsible activity that had ruined agribusinesses, spurred hoarding, and weakened an already staggering economy.

  The kind of activity that had jailed Perri.

  “Chop each tree clean through at the base,” the leader instructed. “Don’t work on adjacent trees or you risk cutting each other. Be quiet and quick. The acid team is right behind you.”

  Dee took the row of trees he gave her. She buzzed her saw through its base, surprised at the savage pleasure it gave her. The air filled with muted buzz (much of the sound was white-noised somehow) and with the sharp smell of the acid poured over the fallen limbs and rooted stumps. Dee felt energy flow into her as she destroyed the crop. Over the havoc she listened for the sound of defending copters or guns, but no one came. She laughed aloud.

  “What’s so funny?” Paula said, on the next row.

  “I just remembered something. An old poem. ‘Only God can make a tree.’ ”

  “Huh,” Paula said. “Forget poetry and just saw.”

  Dee sawed, every vibration a vicious joy. When they were done, the activists slipped over the fields to the vans. Behind them, the carefully created grove lay in acrid burned waste.

  “I found him,” Gum said.

  Dee tensed. It had taken a long time to locate Gum again. She’d finally found him inside the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, living with a group of people armed with shoulder-launched missiles of some type. Where the hell had they gotten them? The things looked military. The whole setup was one Dee would never have approached at all if two different
informants hadn’t said Gum was there. One, heavily bribed, had had the e-mail address. An electric cable snaked across the ground and into the bridge, undoubtedly stealing very expensive energy until the power company discovered it. No longer Dee’s problem. She e-mailed Gum, and at the appointed hour he emerged from the Bridge looking as dirty and demented as ever.

  They sat on packing crates set a hundred yards from the Bridge in an empty lot strewn with broken glass, rags, unidentifiable chunks of metal. Dee counted six rats in two minutes.

  “Where is he?” she asked Gum.

  “Everywheres. Nowheres. Gone and back. A hunnert years.”

  “Not God, Gum! I thought you found Mike!”

  “Gone and back. A hunnert years.”

  Dee held on to her temper. This visit was too important, and too dangerous, to ruin. She waited.

  Finally Gum said, “He watches Mike. He watches me. He watches you. He knows.”

  “What does He know, Gum? Will you tell me so I can know, too?”

  “He knows Mike din’t do it. The plants.”

  “Mike didn’t take my sister to a ship illegal with genemod plants?”

  “Oh, yeah. Praise the Lord.”

  “Mike did take Perri to a genemod illegal?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Gum said. Rheum oozed from his filmy eyes. “Gone and back.”

  “He took her to the ship and he sent her back. But where is Mike now?”

  “God sees.”

  Dee put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. Another rat ran across the lot. Closer to the Bridge a man stood holding a rifle and looking right at her. “Gum, what are you doing with these people who live in the Bridge?”

  “A hunnert years. Straight to God.”

  “You’re their priest,” Dee said. It seemed unlikely, but not impossible. Since the Crisis, a hundred weird religions had sprung up to explain the Earth’s new harshness, atone for the Earth’s new harshness, find hope in the Earth’s new harshness, all kinds of shit. Even criminals, it seemed, could believe in God. Some sort of God. And it might explain what Gum, old and mumbling and shambling, was doing with these well-equipped felons who frankly scared the fuck out of Dee. Priesthood might explain it. Or it might not.

  Gum said, “He din’t do it.”

  “God?”

  “Mike.”

  “What didn’t Mike do, Gum?” They were going in circles.

  “He din’t send that plant to kill you in your apartment.”

  Dee’s breath stopped. “Do you know who did?”

  “T’other side. A hunnert years.”

  “Gum, what other side? Who sent the plant to kill me?”

  “Look to God,” Gum said, and lurched to his feet.

  Dee stood and grabbed at him. “You can’t go now! You have to tell me the rest!”

  The old man tried to pull free. The guard raised his rifle. Hastily Dee released Gum. As he shuffled away, she called after him, “What other side, Gum? Who sent the plant?”

  “It was in all the newspapers,” Gum said over his shoulder. “You was dead.”

  “Gum . . .”

  He was gone.

  She kept at her informants, getting the word out, spending her savings on sweeteners. She went on another raid with Paula’s group, destroying another open farm in Jersey. She visited Perri at Cotsworth, and each time Perri was thinner and quieter and walked with more difficulty. Dee papered the Correctional System with complaints and charges and anger, and none of it brought any changes whatsoever.

  Paula’s group hit an arboretum in Connecticut. Under thick plastic grew bed after bed of lush foliage genemod for . . . what? It didn’t matter. By now, Dee wasn’t even curious. To get into the arboretum they had to blow open the glass with semtex. Instantly alarms wailed. They tossed in the flamers and scattered. Dee, following her instructions, circled widely to the left and ran through an underroad culvert full to her knees with stinking water. Spider webs tore from the roof onto her face. Lights raked the area from a tower she hadn’t known was there, and she could hear a copter roaring closer. But she made it to the van and back onto the highway and all the way to her apartment.

  Only later did she hear that two activists died in the raid. One of them was Paula.

  The next evening Eliot called. “Jesus Christ, Dee, what the fuck are you doing?”

  He knew about the raid. No, impossible, how could he know? Then he’d heard about her working the street. Dee said nothing.

  “How could you go down to see Perri and then gouge into her about what a screw-up she is? ‘You made bad choices, you’ve messed up your life, this prison time will follow you a round forever’. . . how could you, Dee?”

  “It’s all true.”

  “So what? She’s barely hanging on in that hell-hole and she doesn’t need you to go in there and—”

  “How the fuck do you know what she needs? I’ve taken care of her since she was two years old!”

  “And you’ve made her believe she can’t take care of herself without you. You screwed up her life if anyone did. So stop this—”

  Dee slammed her fist into the OFF key. She raged around the one-room apartment until her own fury scared her. Then she tried to calm down: deep breathing, lifting weights, a cup of hot tea. At midnight she finally slept.

  At three she jerked awake. Someone was in the apartment.

  Her hand slid under the blanket for her gun. Before she could grasp it, both arms were jerked above her head and cuffed. The light went on.

  He took off his night-vision hood and pulled a chair beside her bed. Silently he studied her. He was medium height and build, late thirties, brown eyes. Hair the color of a yellow flower. Dee stared back, refusing to show fear. She said, “You’re Mike.”

  “Yes. Although the name is Victor.”

  She snorted and he smiled. “No, really. You don’t look much like Perri, Dee. Come on, we’re going out.”

  She began to scream. The walls were thin; someone would hear. Immediately Victor slapped a gag strip over her mouth. He pulled off her blankets and cuffed her ankles, ignoring her kicks. Wrapping her in the blanket as if she were sick, he lifted her easily and carried her, a dead weight, down three flights of stairs. He was much stronger than he looked.

  A car waited at the curb. Dee thought, incongruously, how long since I rode in a car? Years. Cars were emission-producing demons. People destroyed them like cockroaches. Only emergency vehicles were exempt, and this powerful sleek car was no emergency vehicle.

  They drove through the empty, pot-holed streets, Victor and Dee in the back and the unseen driver behind a shield in the front. Victor removed her gag.

  “Dee, no one is going to hurt you.” Oh, right, as if she believed that. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question. I guess because I hate waste. You’ve wasted a lot of time raiding genemod illegals and harassing ineffective authorities and putting out the word on me throughout Manhattan. Is that ankle cuff too tight for comfort?”

  “No. It’s Perri whose time is being wasted.”

  “I’m sorry about that. There was never any intention that she be charged with anything. I had no idea she’d take a genemod plant.”

  “You merely took her fetal tissue,” Dee said.

  “Yes. It’s the best tissue for human genetic engineering, you know. Stem cells are malleable, the amniotic sac grows organs well, the placenta . . . but I don’t think you’re interested in scientific details. It should have been a mutual gain. Perri wanted to abort, I wanted the tissue.”

  “To create plant ‘art’ that has her eyes.”

  “No,” Victor said. He shifted on the back seat of the car. “I don’t dabble in decorative perversity. I sell the girls’ fetal tissue to whoever can pay well for it. Our real work requires money. No, don’t ask questions now. I want to show you.” And, incredibly, he leaned into a corner of the car and went to sleep.

  Dee tested the door, her bonds, the seat be
lt. Nothing gave. Victor snored softly. She could probably kick him with both feet, but belted in like this, it would be a kick so feeble as to be pointless. Slack, his face looked oddly older. Forties, maybe. Even through her fear and outrage, he puzzled her. Something was off about him. He didn’t seem like any criminal she’d ever seen, not even the smooth-talking, easy-sleeping sociopaths.

  The car stopped. Victor woke and carried Dee along a deserted dock. A remote boat waited, barely big enough for the two of them. Victor untied the mooring lines and pressed a hand-held, and the boat took off silently across the dark water.

  The night was cloudy. Dee could see various lights, but she had no idea what they were. Ships? Land? Buoys? A wind blew and the sea became choppy. Water sloshed into the boat. Dee felt herself growing seasick.

  Victor must have known the signs. Expertly he held her head over the side while she vomited. “Almost there!” he called over the rising wind. Dee threw up again.

  The storm looked ready to break in earnest by the time they drew up alongside what seemed to her a huge ship, completely dark. A metal basket was lowered and Victor dumped her into it. Dee hated feeling helpless. Almost she would rather be knocked out than trussed up and hauled in like mackerel or cod.

  She got her wish. Someone on deck leaned into the metal basket and slapped a patch onto her neck. No way to dislodge it, and in ten seconds everything disappeared.

  She woke in a narrow cabin as steady as if on land. Victor, looking much more rested, sat in a chair beside her bunk. Dee struggled for the dignity of sitting upright. “Where are we?”

  “At sea. The storm passed while you were out. It’s a lovely day.” He lifted her and carried her into a narrow corridor where a wheelchair waited. The blanket slipped off her. Her pajamas smelled, but at least she’d been wearing them. What if she’d been naked when he kidnapped her? And what about her expensive, carefully installed nerve gas? This was the second time it had been disabled. Apparently all of underground New York had become security experts.

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Yes. Just a minute.” He wheeled her to another door, pushed the whole chair in, and closed the door.