Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  He didn’t. He studied her latest printout, frowning at the equations as if he understood them. “So you think somewhere in Hingham, next Thursday?”

  “That’s what the algorithms say.”

  “God, Julie, I need a more specific location than that! Unless I can witness an actual kidnapping, maybe even have a camera set up—”

  She held onto her temper. “I’m a mathematician, Gordon, not a magician. And I’ve given you everything I’ve got.”

  A second later, horror hit her at her own wording, but Gordon, frowning at the sheaf of papers, apparently hadn’t noticed. That caused horror to give way to anger. He never had been any good at reading her feelings, had always enclosed himself in that “objective” professional shell. Well, let him.

  He ran a hand over the gray stubble on his head. “I know. I didn’t mean to snap. But funding for this task force is hanging by a thread. The A-Dic isn’t convinced that the child abductions are linked, and he’s never believed any of the witnesses, you know that.”

  “I know. Can’t blame him, really.” Two witnesses—no, three now, with Mrs. Carter—attesting that someone had invaded their homes, stolen or tried to steal a child, and then dissolved, child and all, into thin air, to the accompaniment of a burst of bright light. Twice the alleged intruder was a deformed teenage boy with a wobbly head, dressed in what was described as a blanket. Once it was a girl, who had been successfully fought off until she dematerialized. Who would believe any of that? Nor did it help that two of the women had been hysterical types; one was now in a mental institution. Some days Julie wasn’t sure that she herself believed this stuff. The common MOs, yes. The irrefutable fact that the children were gone, yes. Above all, the algorithms that traced a nonlinear but discernible mathematical path for the kidnappings.

  She said, “Your Assistant Director has reason to doubt. But I think my usefulness to the task force is pretty much over, and anyway Georgetown wants me back for the spring semester. I’ve booked a flight back to D.C. for tomorrow.”

  Gordon looked up. Was that relief in his eyes? She was lying about Georgetown, but he didn’t know that. He said, “Will you stay on call if we have any questions?”

  “Sure.” She rose, which was a mistake. The wave of nausea took her by surprise, surging up her throat so suddenly that she barely made it to the bathroom. After she threw up, she kicked the door closed behind her, then took her time rinsing her mouth and brushing her teeth. By the time she came out, he would have gone.

  He hadn’t. He stood at the end of the table, papers crumpled in one hand, his still handsome face as white as the printouts. A little vein throbbed in his forehead. “My God, Julie.”

  “It’s nothing. Something I ate at dinner.”

  “It’s not.” And then, “I have three kids, remember.”

  Something in her that she hadn’t counted on, some streak of anger or blame, made her lash out at him. “Now you’ve got one more.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She sat down. The motel chair creaked under her. “Let’s get one thing straight, Gordon. This has nothing to do with you. I mean, it will have nothing to do with you. You don’t need to be involved at all.”

  “You’re keeping it?”

  “Yes.” She was thirty-eight, with no real relationship in sight now that the ill-thought-out thing with Gordon had ended. This might be her last chance.

  “How far along are you?”

  “Three and a half months.” Her stocky figure meant that, with her habitually loose clothing, no one had yet noticed. They would soon. She had arranged to extend her sabbatical from Georgetown to a full year, had already bought a crib, a changing table, impossibly tiny onesies. The nausea was supposed to have stopped by now but, as her obstetrician said, every pregnancy is different.

  Gordon’s jaw tightened. “You weren’t going to tell me at all, were you?”

  “No.” And then, from that same unexplored well of anger—but at what? “You have your hands full already, with Deborah and your kids.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Julie found herself studying him almost impersonally, as if he were someone she’d just met. Such a handsome man, with his deep blue eyes, firm jaw, prematurely gray hair that looked masterful rather than old. “Masterful”—that was the right word for Gordon. He liked to control situations. And yet he had been tender with her, from the conventional beginning of too-long “business dinners,” through the trite progression to so much more.

  Had she really ever loved him? It had felt like romance, those first few months of delicious hidden hours. And yet even then, Julie had had her doubts. Not because Gordon was married, but because of something in his character and—be honest!—in her own. Both of them wanted to make their own decisions, keep their options open. That stubborn independence was why Julie had never married, and why Gordon cheated on his wife. Neither had ever told the other “I love you.” Both had wanted freedom more than the inevitable compromises and sacrifices of genuine love.

  And yet now Gordon stood at his end of the littered table, running his hand through his gray hair and looking more troubled than Julie had known possible. But, then, Gordon was not one to shirk responsibilities. That wouldn’t have fit with his image of himself.

  “Julie, if there’s anything I can do . . . money . . .”

  Her anger evaporated. This situation was not his fault. Nor hers—precautions sometimes failed. Gordon would never leave drama-queen Deborah, and she didn’t want him to, no matter what romantic fantasies dictated that she should want. Julie needed nothing from him.

  “I’m fine,” she said gently. “Truly.”

  “At least let me—”

  “No.” She went into her motel bedroom and closed the door, her back to it until she heard him leave.

  APRIL 2014

  The sheep pasture high in New Zealand hills lay thick in white clover. One corner of the pasture had been planted with chicory, but the clover grew wild. Low, white-flowered, sweet-smelling, it attracted the bees buzzing above the fenced pasture. Sheep munched contentedly, flicking their tails. Beside the fence, two lambs chased each other.

  The clover’s root system, fibrous and fast-growing, laced itself through the soil. The original tap root extended three feet deep; branches clustered thickly near the top grew, in turn, a mass of fine rootlets. Much of the system was slimed with new bacteria, created by a long chain of plasmid swaps. There had been more than enough candidates for this gene-swapping: a teaspoon of the sheep pasture’s soil contained over 600 million bacteria. The new anaerobic strain included a gene that broke down carbohydrates, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol.

  The alcohol accumulated on the plant roots. In a short time the fermentation had deposited ethanol on the plant roots in a concentration of one part per million. When the concentration reached twice that, the clover began to die.

  The new bacteria went on multiplying. A ewe munched up a handful of clover, jostling the root system so that it touched another. The ewe ambled on toward her lamb.

  2035

  McAllister didn’t let Pete sit alone by the Shell wall for very long. She found him in another of the maze of unused rooms, as she always found him wherever he went, and knelt beside him. The folds of her simple long dress, made from a blue bed sheet patterned with yellow flowers, puddled on the metal floor. “Pete.”

  “Go away.”

  “No.” She didn’t put her arms around him; she knew better, after last time. He had hit her. From frustration, hurt, anger, hate. Never had he regretted anything so much in his short life.

  “Then don’t go away. I don’t care.”

  She smiled. “Yes, you do. And I have something good to tell you.”

  Despite himself, he said, “What?”

  “The two little girls you brought us a week ago are doing fine.”

  “They are?” And then, because he didn’t want to look yet at anything good, “A week ago? I was sick for a week?”

>   “Yes.”

  “I missed a whole week of duties?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry about it. Your foot got infected and you were wonderful. Just kept fighting. You always do.”

  That was McAllister: always encouraging, always kind. She was one of the Survivors, from the time before the Tesslies destroyed the world. When that happened, McAllister had been only twenty-one, six years older than Pete was now. The Tesslies had put her and twenty-five others in the Shell, and then—what? Kept them there to breed and . . . . Pete didn’t know what the Tesslies had wanted, or wanted now. Who could understand killer aliens who destroyed a world and then for over twenty years kept a zoo going with random survivors? And when that experiment failed, having produced only six children, replaced it with another experiment involving machinery that they could have put in the Shell decades before?

  Only four of the Survivors were still alive: McAllister, Eduardo, Xiaobo, and the awful Darlene. “Radiation damage created cancers and genetic damage,” McAllister had said; Pete hadn’t listened closely to the rest of the explanation. Jenna and Paolo, not him, were good at that science stuff. What Pete knew was that the Survivors miscarried, got weaker, eventually died. Most of them he couldn’t even remember, including both his biological parents, although he was the oldest of the Six. But he remembered Seth and Hannah, Robert and Jenny, and especially kind and loving Bridget, who had died only three months ago. All the Six had loved Bridget, and so had the Grab kids.

  Pete looked at McAllister. She was so beautiful. Her face was lined and her breasts sagged a little beneath her loose dress, but her body was slim and curving, her dark eyes and rich brown skin unmarred. And she was whole. Not damaged like the next generation, the Six. Not old-looking like the other three Survivors. She was the smartest of everybody, and the sweetest. Again Pete felt the love surge up in him, and the lust. The latter was completely hopeless and he knew it. The knowledge turned him sullen again.

  “So who did the next Grab? Was there one?”

  “The platform brightened but nobody went.”

  “Why didn’t Paolo go? He was next in line!”

  “He fell asleep and missed it.”

  “He’s a wimp.” It was their deadliest insult, learned from the Survivors. It meant you shirked your fair share of work and risk and unpleasant duties like lugging shit buckets to the fertilizer machine. It was also unfair applied to Paolo, who had always been sickly and couldn’t help falling asleep. He had some disease that made him do it. Pete had forgotten the name.

  “Paolo isn’t really strong enough for a Grab unless it’s a store, and who can predict that?” McAllister said reasonably. “I’m taking him off Grab duty. Pete, don’t you want to hear about the little girls?”

  “No. Caity could have gone on the Grab when Paolo fell asleep,” he said, although he knew that if it wasn’t her turn, she wouldn’t have been anywhere near the machinery. But Pete had his own reasons for a grudge against Caity, reasons he couldn’t tell McAllister. And the truth was that of the Six, Pete and Ravi were best at the Grab. Terrell wouldn’t go until he turned twelve, Paolo and Jenna had gotten too sickly, Caity had her arm broken when she tried to Grab a child, which she hadn’t even been able to bring back. Although, to be fair, Caity insisted on going again as soon as her arm healed. But Pete was in no mood to be fair to Caity.

  Only the Six could go through the Grab machinery. Before the humans in the Shell knew that, they’d lost two Survivors, Robert and Seth. You’d think the Tesslies would have told McAllister about the age limit when they left the Grab machinery a year ago! But no one had even seen them leave the machinery (and how did they do that?). Nobody had seen a Tesslie in twenty-one years, and nobody ever had heard one speak. Maybe they couldn’t.

  McAllister said, still trying to cheer up Pete, “Both little girls are adjusting so much better than we’d hoped. You must come see them. The little girl said her name is Kara. She just called the infant ‘Baby,’ so we had to pick a name for her, and we chose ‘Petra.’ After you.”

  Petra. Despite himself, Pete rolled the name on his tongue, savoring it as once—only once—he’d savored “candy” that Paolo had Grabbed when he’d found himself sent to a store. They’d all had a piece. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, McAllister had called them. Feeling the astounding sweetness dissolve on his tongue, Pete had hated the Tesslies all over again. This, this, this—he might have had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup every day of his life! A whole Peanut Butter Cup, every day!

  He might even have had a woman like McAllister.

  “Come see Petra,” she coaxed.

  He’d been trained since birth not to indulge himself. Don’t be a wimp! Indulgence in moods was selfish and against the restarting of humanity. Some of the others might be better at remembering that—well, all of the others—but Pete had his pride. He’d been indulgent enough for one day. He got painfully to his feet, his head wobbling, and followed McAllister to see Petra.

  APRIL 2014

  The Connecticut salt marsh had been filled in during the 1940s, restored during the 1980s, overrun with too many tourists enjoying its beauty in the 1990s, and finally declared an ecologically protected area in 2004. Although it proved impossible to completely eliminate the invasive nonnative plant species, the natural floral layering of back-barrier marsh was returning. At the lowest level, where the tide brought surges of salt water twice a day, cordgrass and glassworts dominated. Higher up, it was salt hay. Higher still, on the upland border of the marsh, the ground was thick with black rush and marsh elder.

  A particularly large marsh elder, nearly eight feet high, held a half-finished nest. A red-winged blackbird brought another piece of grass, laid it in the nest, and flew off. The shrub’s still furled buds, which would soon become greenish-white flowers, bobbed in a wind from the sea.

  Below ground, bacteria mutated again. This time it found the lower salinity much more congenial than it had the roots of cordgrass, a month ago. The bacterial slime engaged in all its metabolic processes, including mitosis and fermentation. Alcohol began to accumulate on the marsh elder’s roots.

  NOVEMBER 2013

  Julie sat in a crowded Starbucks in D.C. across the table from her best friend, Linda Campinelli. Julie’s latte and Linda’s double caramel macchiato sat untouched. The women known each other since Princeton, brought together by the vagaries of the roommate-matching computer even though they were complete opposites. Linda, a large untidy woman with a large untidy husband and three riotous sons, was an animal psychologist in Bethesda. She told long, funny stories about neurotically territorial cats or schnauzers that developed a fear of their water dishes. But not today.

  “Ju . . . are you sure?”

  “I’m four months along. Of course I’m sure.”

  “Gordon?”

  “Of course it was Gordon! How many men do you think I was banging at once?”

  “I meant what will Gordon and you do?”

  Julie had expected this. Linda was not only a romantic, she was sociability squared. Maybe even cubed. Not even after four years of dorm living did Linda understand Julie’s preference for silence and solitude. For Linda, all decisions and all endeavors were group activities.

  “Linda, there is no ‘Gordon and me.’ And I don’t want there to be. I’m having the baby, I’m keeping the baby, I’m raising the baby. Georgetown’s given me a year’s sabbatical, for which I was overdue anyway. I’ve got great medical coverage. I feel fine now that morning sickness is over. And I’m happy to be doing this alone.”

  “Except for me,” said Linda, to whom anything else was unthinkable.

  Julie smiled. “Of course. You can be my labor coach. Always good to have a coach who won all her own games.”

  “And your due date is—”

  “May 1.”

  Linda sipped her caramel macchiato. Julie saw that her friend was still troubled. Linda would never understand isolates like Julie and Jake.

  As if reading Julie’s mind,
Linda said, “And how is that gorgeous brother of yours?”

  “Still monitoring mud in Wyoming.” Jake was a geologist.

  “What did he say about the baby?”

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “But he’ll come here for the birth, right?”

  “I’m sure he will,” said Julie, who was sure of no such thing. She and Jake liked being affectionate at a distance.

  “Then you’ll have me and Jake, and I’m sure that Lucy Anderson will come to—”

  Ah, Linda! Even parturition required a committee.

  That evening Julie’s cell rang just as she was tapping the lid back on a paint can in her D.C. apartment. Paint had spilled over the side of the can and flowed down its side, but fortunately she had laid down a thick wad of paper. Winterfresh green puddled over a science article: POLLUTION FROM ASIA CONTAMINATES STRATOSPHERE. Julie’s paper mask was still in place; the baby book had recommended a filter mask if a pregnant woman felt it absolutely necessary to paint something. Julie had felt it absolutely necessary to paint her mother’s old chest of drawers, after which she would apply decals of bears. The ultrasound showed she was having a girl. But no Disney princesses or any of that shit; Julie’s daughter would be brought up to be a strong, independent woman. Bears were a good start.

  The nursery, formerly Julie’s study, was very cold, since the baby book had also recommended painting with open windows. She shivered as she picked up her cell and walked into the hallway of the two-bedroom apartment, squeezing past the furniture and boxes moved from her former study. Somehow she would have to find room for all this stuff. At the moment her computer and printer sat on the dining table and her file cabinet crowded the kitchen. The baby wasn’t even here yet and it had disrupted everything. “Hello. Julie Kahn speaking.”

  “It’s Gordon.”

  Damn. She said neutrally, “Yes?”

  “Is that really you? You sound all muffled.”