Fictions

by Nancy Kress

From the second box a woman pulled a skirt made of sheets of the thin green material. She put it on over her shorts. Everyone applauded and a child cried, “Pretty!”

  Tim beamed. “More layers and some biological tweaks, and you get this.”

  The other man, whose name, Zed suddenly remembered, was Jon, pulled a stiff piece of faintly green board from the third box. Dramatically he tried to break it in two. It didn’t even bend. He held it high over his head and said, “Building material!”

  The second woman, no older than Zed, couldn’t wait for Tim. She shouted, “And look at this!” From the last box she pulled a bottle of darker green liquid and what looked like an ancient lawn-mower engine, so heavy she could barely lift it. Jon helped her. When it was on the ground, she poured the green liquid into the tank and pulled a long cord. The engine sputtered, then caught and roared into life. Over the noise the girl yelled, “Biofuel! With no carbon emissions and biodegradable waste products!” She burst into tears.

  Zed watched, both a part of the jubilation and outside of it. He understood that the Goop Guys, the aliens, everyone in The Resort, were trying to remake the world, one tiny advance at a time. Or maybe they weren’t tiny advances. Civilization, pretty much stalled since June 30th, could use these safer, cleaner, better things to move forward again. But—civilization was so big. The world was so big. Whole countries were re-establishing the old ways of mining, drilling, manufacturing—Ruhan had told him so. Could these new ideas really change anything?

  And if they did, was that enough justification for—

  “Zed,” Delia said. She’d come up behind him without him hearing her. For once her face, with its long, disfiguring, never-explained scar, was without sarcasm or slyness. “C7 wants you in the Residence.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He called me on my link, since you don’t have yours with you. Again. I’m supposed to go with you.”

  Zed got to his feet. People crowded around the gazebo or picked up breakfast dishes or started back to the cabins. The distance to C7’s building, which Zed now knew was the alien command center, seemed long. Zed’s stomach clenched, although he couldn’t have said why.

  C7 looked the same as always, a glittery cylinder patchy with slime. He said, “Hello, Zed. You have a decision to make.”

  “A decision? What?”

  C7 hesitated. Zed had never seen it do that before. Then it said, “Your mother is outside the gate. She wants to come in.”

  The words didn’t make sense. “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “That’s . . . not possible.”

  “Certainly it is not usual. Nor would we normally consider such a request. Look.”

  One wall brightened, not into the usual three-dimensional and multisensory holos but merely into a flat screen. Zed’s mother, flanked by Isobel and Gary, stood beside the dome wall. Zed’s mother said, “I want to see my son. Please. Let me inside.”

  She looked terrible. Thin, haggard, leaning on Isobel’s shoulder. Zed’s knees trembled. Delia demanded, “Why her? You never let in relatives of people who want to see us! Why is Zed different?”

  C7 didn’t answer. Zed finally got out, “Can I—can she—”

  “You may go out to her, as can anyone who wishes to see relatives. Delia, you know that. But the few who have done that have then been taken away by those relatives by force. We were very sorry to lose them, and so we have changed our policy. Your mother may come into the wall chamber to see you, but no farther. It is natural that she should be concerned for her child.”

  Zed’s mind skittered in three directions at once: Did he want to see his mother? Would Isobel come into the wall chamber with her? And if C7 thought it was natural for a mother to want to see her child, did that mean that it too had a mother—that the aliens lived in families? They had always refused to discuss themselves. Was this a clue?

  Was this a trap, set by Isobel to get inside?

  Did Zed—

  “What is your decision?” C7 said. “Shall I let her into the chamber wall?”

  His mother’s image on the screen said, “Please, Zed. I’m dying.”

  Zed said, “Yes.”

  “Delia will accompany you.”

  Why? In case his mother, frail and old and as near to tears as Zed himself, had become an Earther and tried to overpower him? Zed didn’t ask.

  The walk to the gate felt disorienting; Zed had not been to the south end of The Resort since he’d arrived—how long ago? Two months. Only two months. Suddenly, with a sickening jolt, Zed realized that June 30th had come and gone without his even noticing. June 30th. How was that possible?

  Delia said nothing on the mile-long walk. When they reached the wall, a small section of its surface dissolved and Zed and Delia walked into the featureless chamber. After the wall had closed behind them, the tunnel opened and his mother crawled through on her hands and knees. “Let me in, too, you bastards!” Isobel shouted, unseen. “She needs me!”

  Isobel’s yelling ceased and Zed helped his mother to her feet. He could feel her bones through her thin shirt, sharp as chisels. She sagged against him in what, he realized with somehow remote astonishment, was a hug. He could not remember her ever hugging him before.

  “Zed, Zed, Zed . . .” His name might have been a prayer.

  “Mother . . .” He wished Delia were not there, or at least that she would turn her back. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. They—Isobel—take good care of me.”

  “Why did you come? You’re . . . not well—why did you come? How did you know where I am?”

  “Isobel found me. A few days after your father died.”

  “Father is dead?” He couldn’t imagine it. That angry, mean, vital force had seemed as eternal as the mountain where he’d barricaded himself.

  “An accident out hunting. He didn’t come home and I went looking for him and found his body in the woods. I couldn’t even lift it, but then Isobel and her cousins came and helped me bury him. She came looking for us, to tell us where you were. She said she knew how a mother would grieve for her only child who disappeared.”

  Isobel? Who Mrs. Bellingham had seemed to loathe?

  “She’s so good,” Zed’s mother said. “I got sick and she took care of me. I’m not well—I won’t ever be well again—but when I could travel she and her cousins brought me here on a truck. To see you.”

  A last effort to get inside the wall. Zed didn’t say it aloud. The sight of his mother moved and confused him. Wispy, insubstantial, as if the shadow of his father, in which she’d lived for all of Zed’s life, had been the only thing lending her substance. She said, “I need . . . to sit down.”

  He eased her to the floor and sat beside her. Delia remained lounging against the blank wall, watching. Zed said, “What . . . what are you going to do?”

  “Will you come back out and take care of me?”

  It was said as simply as a child. Zed’s throat thickened.

  “I can’t.”

  His mother nodded, as if this was no more than she expected, or deserved. “Then Isobel will. She sent you this.” From her pants pocket she drew a folded piece of paper. Zed took it without opening it.

  “Zed, are you all right? The aliens haven’t . . . hurt you?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “They pay you well enough for your work?”

  She had no idea what The Resort was and, Zed realized, she wouldn’t understand if he told her. She wouldn’t even be interested. This visit to find him was her last flicker of interest in pretty much anything. She had no concern for any possible future.

  You look no farther ahead than your own short lives, C7 had said.

  Zed said, “Yes. They pay me well.”

  Neither of them could think of anything else to say.

  Finally Zed said, “Tell me when you want to go back out.”

  “Now, I guess.”

  Delia said to the air, “She’s going out now, C7.”

/>   The mechanical voice, so unlike C7’s rich and deep bass, said, “Does Zed go with her?”

  Delia looked at him. Zed twitched, as if an electric current had burned him. Delia said to the air, “No.”

  His mother made no last-minute plea, no tearful good-byes. Spent, she merely received Zed’s kiss and crawled painfully back through the wall. Again Isobel’s voice, this time pleading instead of shouting: “Please, Zed, come out to see me, or let me come in, I miss you so much, I love you—”

  On the walk back to the dorm, past the fields and picking their way across the pebbly beach smelling of salt, Delia finally said, “Is she beautiful?”

  “Yes,” Zed said. Delia touched her scar, a gesture she seemed to immediately regret, and said nothing more.

  “Far-seeing is a game,” C7 said.

  “A game?” Zed stared at the alien-thing. He had not slept well last night. Dreams of his mother had mingled with one of Washington, D.C., disappearing silently and forever.

  “Yes. Not because it is trivial, but because it possesses the same properties as, say, chess.”

  “A game.” Fifty-one percent of Earth’s population destroyed.

  “A game must have three properties. First, a clear goal. Second, there must be rules. Third, the easiest way to accomplish something is not allowed. If, for instance, the goal is to capture the opposing king, you may not simply grab it off the chessboard and run away with it. Nor shoot the football over the goalpost with a cannon. Sit down, Zed. You are so large standing up.”

  Zed sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the wooden chair the Carpenter Team had made. His head was at the same height as the top of C7. Zed watched the pattern of lights on the diamond-like facets under the patchy slime. He said, “What is the goal of far-seeing?”

  “To find the probable pattern of the future, in order that action may be taken to either advance or prevent it.”

  Karachi disappearing, London, Shanghai, New York . . . Zed had memorized hundreds of city names, from Karachi to Sturbridge.

  C7 said, “The rules are those that govern human behavior, ecology, and physics. One example of such a rule: in any group, 20 percent of humans determine the customs that the other 80 percent eventually adopt. We will not study these rules in words or mathematics, since it’s clear that you do not think that way.”

  “So what will we do?”

  “You will do two things. You will play chess against your link, a great deal of chess. Also, you will come here four times a day, for an hour each time, to experience holo simulations. Eventually, your mind will integrate the pattern-spotting ability of good chess players and the information in the simulations. This will happen below the level of awareness. Your particular mind is associative, not linear, to an unusual degree. Sleep will greatly help the integration. Let us begin.”

  “C7,” Zed said slowly, “how do you know so much about how my mind works, since you are not human?”

  “Let us begin,” C7 said again. His inflection did not change. The room disappeared around Zed as the first holo sprang to life.

  It felt like life. Two women haggling in a village open-air market over how many vegetables to trade for a hand-sewn child’s shirt. Zed could see the women, hear them (although not understand their language), smell the peppers and pumpkins. The holo vanished, to be replaced by another.

  A wolf, bringing down and devouring a rabbit.

  Children chasing each other in summer twilight.

  Smokestacks pouring gray particles into the air.

  A map of what Zed recognized as the United States, covered with raging storms. Then another, covered with deserts.

  People trekking wearily a long, long way for a drink of fresh water.

  Fresh water cascading from a mountain spring.

  Bombs falling on a city, with buildings and cars and people exploding into flames.

  Women cooking over a fire in the center of a ring of round huts.

  People riding bicycles along green-lined paths.

  Coal burning in a fireplace, the walls of the cabin black with soot.

  On and on, until Zed’s head shivered with images. But it did not occur to him to stand and walk out.

  Finally C7 stopped. The sudden bareness and silence were shocking. “Now go sleep. When you wake, play chess. At sunset, come back here for more.”

  Zed stumbled from the room. In the pocket of his pants, the same ones he’d worn when he arrived, Isobel’s note lay folded small and hard as a chip of coal. Like coal, it felt to his fingers as if it could ignite and blaze.

  Delia waited outside, Ruhan beside her. The air between them shimmered with dislike, but they were both there. “Hey, are you all right?” Ruhan said.

  “Yes,” Zed said. And then, for reasons he could not have articulated, “I need to be alone.”

  Ruhan looked offended. Delia did not. The breeze blew softly from the ocean, and the waves moved ceaselessly on the sand.

  Zed played chess. He experienced simulations. He slept, much more than he had slept since he was very small. He went for long walks alone, and afterward could not remember anything he had thought about while walking. He slept with Leah, who seduced him, and it was not anywhere as heart-racing as it had been with Isobel.

  A simulation of a house being built, the construction workers all cooperating. Ground split open by fracking, and an entire village slowly disappearing into the sinkhole.

  Two young people holding hands, kissing, starting to undress together.

  A vast and perfect lawn, smelling of freshly cut grass and spicy flowers.

  Garbage, enormous mounds of it, drifting on the sea.

  Rabbits, eating a vegetable patch clear down to the ground.

  A house made of what looked like Tim’s nanocellulose, green and low and beautiful.

  Happy children, dark faces and bright clothing, singing a song.

  “Some configurations of actions,” C7 said, “lead to disaster, even though each action in itself is harmless, even beneficial. This is true in both chess and far-seeing.”

  Zed said nothing. He almost never beat his link at a game of chess. When he did, it brought him no pleasure.

  He dreamed of the mountain where his father had built their cabin. In his dream the entire mountain disappeared in a silent burst of light.

  A holo, which might have taken the shape of a church, blinked off a second after Zed glimpsed it. Jamie, a member of the Goop Guys, stood in the door of the Residence. “C7, some new people are at the gate, wanting entrance.”

  C7 swiveled its cylindrical body slightly. The small screen, its flatness dull after the holos, appeared on the wall. Two boys stood there, no more than nine or ten, holding hands. They looked terrified. Isobel and Gary hovered behind them. At the sight of her, something bloomed in Zed’s chest. She might have been only using him to try to get inside the wall, but nonetheless he wanted to touch her in the same unreasoning way he wanted food, water, sleep. Primitive Boy.

  “Can we come in?” said the slightly taller of the two boys. He scowled.

  “It’s a ploy,” Jamie said. “They’re too young to either make up their own minds or to be of any use here.”

  C7 said, “Sometimes it’s hard to know what will be of use.” A pattern of light flashed on its body and a small square of wall below the screen lit up briefly. Now that he was looking closely, Zed could see that the wall, from just below the screen to the floor, was almost imperceptibly marked with a grid of small squares, each no more than an inch on each side.

  On the screen, the smaller child gasped and clutched the other. The wall must be opening.

  Isobel and Gary darted forward and met with the barrier. Gary began cursing. Isobel put her hand on the shoulder of the smaller child. “He can’t go in without me! I take care of these children! You have to let me come in with them!”

  The older boy started forward, dragging the younger away from Isobel. On the older boy’s thin, pinched little face shone determination. The younger loo
ked about to cry, but he followed. They dropped to their knees and began to crawl through the opening, their faces growing larger on the screen.

  “No!” Isobel called, grabbing the younger and hauling him back.

  Quicker than Zed would have thought possible, the older boy backed through the opening, whirled to face Isobel, and drew a long, wicked knife. It flashed in the sunlight as he lunged at her. She screamed and let go of the younger child. Gary started forward as the older boy yelled, “Pete! Go!” and the younger, short enough to not need to crawl, ducked his head and scooted through the mist. The older, brandishing his knife, followed, and then the wall screen shifted to show them both in the featureless chamber Zed remembered so well.

  Jamie said, “C7, you can’t let them in! He’s violent! Why did the barrier even let him cross?”

  C7 said, “I overrode the amygdala scans. The child is only violent in protecting his brother, I think. He has determination. Besides, what harm can the boy do in here? He will not bring his knife.”

  What harm can the boy do in here? The words echoed in Zed’s brain, for all the world as if they’d been bounced off the mountain he used to live on. What harm can the boy do in here?

  Jamie scowled but said no more. Zed was surprised she’d said that much. Zed never told C7 what to do. Not because C7 seemed to be the leader of the aliens, not because C7 was Zed’s teacher, not because Zed had been raised to not answer back to his father. Some other, unfathomable reason.

  C7 said, “Jamie, take Leah and go meet the children. Bring them to J4.”

  “They’re too old for the nursery,” Jamie said, but she left. C7 turned back to Zed. The interrupted holo reappeared—it was a church. Others followed. As always, Zed did not try to think about them but merely let his brain absorb the images. As always, the effort exhausted him. Why should that be? Experiencing holos, playing chess—none of it should be anywhere near as tiring as clearing rocks from tiny upland meadows, planting, weeding, harvesting, chopping wood, butchering chickens, fetching water. But it was.

  What harm can the boy do in here?

  The computer team, who called themselves the Wave Wonders, had a breakthrough in their work. Zed did not understand it. He understood, with some diff iculty, that computers Outside were connected to each other through “servers” on “the internet.” He also understood that the computers Inside could not join the internet or they might be “hacked.” The computers Inside had started, Ruhan told him, with decrepit and mostly non-functioning laptops brought in by some of the first humans to enter The Resort. These had been supplemented and then replaced with new technology partly given by the aliens and partly developed Inside. Zed gathered that it used a different kind of design, a different way of talking to each other, and none of it required electricity but was powered by “fuel cells.” That was all he understood, and eventually Ruhan gave up trying to explain it to him.