Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  The secret experiment turned out to be not all that secret.

  Evan followed the rumors. Within a day he had found a lab tech in the Biology Group who knew a scientist in the Spore Group who referred him, so obliquely that Evan almost missed it, to a security officer. Evan came to Marianne in her room, where she’d gone instead of eating lunch. He stood close to her and murmured in her ear, ending with, “They’ll let us observe. You—what’s that, then?”

  The last sentence was said in a normal voice. Evan gazed at the piece of paper in Marianne’s hands. She had been looking at it since she’d found it under her door.

  “Another note from Noah. He isn’t . . . he can’t . . . Evan, I need to go ashore to see my new grandchild.”

  Evan blinked. “Your new grandchild?”

  “Yes. He’s three months old already and I haven’t even seen him.”

  “It’s not safe to leave the Embassy now. You know that.”

  “Yes. But I need to go.”

  Gently Evan took the note from her and read it. Marianne saw that he didn’t really understand. Young, childless, orphaned . . . how could he? Noah had not forgiven her for never telling him that he was adopted. That must be why he said he might not ever see her again; no other reason made sense. Although maybe he would change his mind. Maybe in time he would forgive her, maybe he would not, maybe the world would end first. Before any of those things happened, Marianne had to see little Jason. She had to affirm what family ties she had, no matter how long she had them. Or anyone had them.

  She said, “I need to talk to Ambassador Smith. How do I do that?”

  He said, “Do you want me to arrange it?”

  “Yes. Please. For today.”

  He didn’t mention the backlog of samples in the lab. No one had replaced Gina. As family trees of the L7 haplogroup were traced in the matrilineal line, more and more of Smith’s “clan” were coming aboard the Embassy. Marianne suspected they hoped to be shielded or transported when the spore cloud hit. She also suspected they were right. The Denebs were . . .

  . . . were just as insistent on family connections as she was, risking her life to see Ryan, Connie, and the baby.

  Well.

  A helicopter flew her directly from the large pier outside the Embassy (so that’s what it was for). When Marianne had last been outside, autumn was just ending. Now it was spring, the reluctant Northern spring of tulips and late frosts, cherry blossoms and noisy frogs. The Vermont town where Connie’s parents lived, and to which Ryan had moved his family for safety, was less than twenty miles from the Canadian border. The house was a pleasant brick faux-Colonial set amid bare fields. Marianne noted, but did not comment on, the spiked chain-link fence around the small property, the electronic-surveillance sticker on the front door, and the large Doberman whose collar Ryan held in restraint. He had hastened home from his field work when she phoned that she was coming.

  “Mom! Welcome!”

  “We’re so glad you’re here, Marianne,” Connie said warmly. “Even though I suspect it isn’t us you came to see!” She grinned and handed over the tiny wrapped bundle.

  The baby was asleep. Light-brown fuzz on the top of his head, silky skin lightly flushed with pink, tiny pursed mouth sucking away in an infant dream. He looked so much as Ryan had that tears pricked Marianne’s eyes. Immediately she banished them: no sorrow, neither nostalgic nor catastrophic, was going to mar this occasion.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said, inadequately.

  “Yes!” Connie was not one of those mothers who felt obliged to disclaim praise of her child.

  Marianne held the sleeping baby while coffee was produced. Connie’s parents were away, helping Connie’s sister, whose husband had just left her and whose three-year-old was ill. This was touched on only lightly. Connie kept the conversation superficial, prattling in her pretty voice about Jason, about the dog’s antics, about the weather. Marianne followed suit, keeping to herself the thought that, after all, she had never heard Connie talk about anything but light and cheerful topics. She must have more to her than that, but not in front of her mother-in-law. Ryan said almost nothing, sipping his coffee, listening to his wife.

  Finally Connie said, “Oh, I’ve just been monopolizing the conversation! Tell us about life aboard the Embassy. It must be so fascinating!”

  Ryan looked directly at Marianne.

  She interpreted the look as a request to keep up the superficial tone. Ryan had always been as protective of Connie as of a pretty kitten. Had he deliberately chosen a woman so opposite his mother because Marianne had always put her work front and center? Had Ryan resented her for that as much as Noah had?

  Pushing aside these disturbing thoughts, she chatted about the aliens. Connie asked her to describe them, their clothes, her life there. Did she have her own room? Had she been able to decorate it? Where did the humans eat?

  “We’re all humans, Terrans and Denebs,” Marianne said.

  “Of course,” Connie said, smiling brilliantly. “Is the food good?”

  Talking, talking, talking, but not one question about her work. Nor about the spore cloud, progress toward a vaccine, anything to indicate the size and terror of the coming catastrophe. Ryan did ask about the Embassy, but only polite questions about its least important aspects: how big it was, how it was laid out, what was the routine. Safe topics.

  Just before a sense of unreality overwhelmed Marianne, Ryan’s cell rang, and the ringing woke the baby, who promptly threw up all over Marianne.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Connie said. “Here, give him to me!”

  Ryan, making gestures of apology, took his cell into the kitchen and closed the door. Connie reached for a box of Wet Ones and began to wipe Jason’s face. She said, “The bathroom is upstairs to the left, Marianne. If you need to, I can loan you something else to wear.”

  “It would have to be one of your maternity dresses,” Marianne said. It came out more sour than she’d intended.

  She went upstairs and cleaned baby vomit off her shirt and jeans with a wet towel. The bathroom was decorated in a seaside motif, with hand towels embroidered with sailboats, soap shaped like shells, blue walls painted with green waves and smiling dolphins. On top of the toilet tank, a crocheted cylinder decorated like a buoy held a spare roll of toilet paper.

  Keeping chaos at bay with cute domesticity. Good plan. And then: Stop it, Marianne.

  Using the toilet, she leafed idly through magazines stacked in a rustic basket. Good Housekeeping, Time, a Macy’s catalogue. She pulled out a loose paper with full-color drawings:

  HOW TO TELL PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE FROM NATIVE PLANTS DON’T BE FOOLED BY LOOK-ALIKES!

  Purple loosestrife leaves are downy with smooth edges. Although usually arranged opposite each other in pairs which alternate down the stalk at 90-degree angles, the leaves may sometimes appear in groups of three. The leaves lack teeth. The flowers, which appear in mid- to late summer, form a showy spike of rose-purple, each with five to seven petals. The stem is stiff, four-sided, and may appear woody at the base of larger plants, which can reach ten feet tall. Average height is four feet. Purple loosestrife can be distinguished from the native winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum), which it most closely resembles, by its generally larger size, opposite leaves, and more closely placed flowers. It may also be confused with blue vervain (pictured below), which has . . .

  At the bottom of the page, someone—presumably Ryan—had hand-drawn in purple ink three stylized versions of a loosestrife spike, then circled one. To Marianne it looked like a violet rocket ship unaccountably sprouting leaves.

  Downstairs, Jason had been cleaned up and changed. Marianne played with him the limited games available for three-month-old babies: peek-a-boo, feetsies go up and down, where did the finger go? When he started to fuss and Connie excused herself to nurse him, Marianne said her good-byes and went out to the helicopter waiting in a nearby field. Neighbors had gathered around it, and Ryan was telling them—what? The neighbors looked h
armless, but how could you tell? Always, Gina was on her mind. She hugged Ryan fiercely.

  As the copter lifted and the house, the town, the countryside got smaller and smaller, Marianne tried not to think of what a failure the visit had been. Yes, she had seen her grandchild. But whatever comfort or connection that had been supposed to bring her, it hadn’t. It seemed to her, perhaps irrationally, that never had she felt so alone.

  NOAH

  When Noah woke, he instantly remembered what day it was. For a long moment, he lay still, savoring the knowledge like rich chocolate on the tongue. Then he said good-bye to his room. He would never sleep here, out of his energy suit, again.

  Over the months, he had made the room as World as he could. A sleeping mat, thin but with as much give as a mattress, rolled itself tightly as soon as he sprang up and into the tiny shower. On the support wall he had hung one of Oliver’s pictures—not a half-dressed barbarian princess this time, but a black-and-white drawing of plants in the World garden. The other walls, which seemed thin as rice paper but somehow kept out sound, had been programmed, at Noah’s request, with the subtly shifting colors that the Worlders favored for everything except family gatherings. Color was extremely important to Worlders, and so to Noah. He was learning to discern shades that had once seemed all the same. This blue for mourning; this blue for adventure; this blue for loyalty. He had discarded all his Terran clothes. How had he ever stood the yellow polo shirt, the red hoodie? Wrong, wrong.

  Drying his body, he rehearsed his request to Mee^hao¡ (rising inflection in the middle, click at the end—Noah loved saying his name).

  Breakfast, like all World meals, was communal, a time to affirm ties. Noah had already eaten in his room; the energy suit did not permit the intake of food. Nonetheless, he took his place in the hierarchy at the long table, above Oliver and Jacqui and below everyone else. That was just. Family solidarity rested on three supports: inclusion, rank, and empathy. A triangle was the strongest of all geometrical figures.

  “G’morning,” Oliver said, yawning. He was not a morning person, and resented getting up for a breakfast he would not eat until much later.

  “I greet you,” Noah said in World. Oliver blinked.

  Jacqui, quicker, said, “Oh, today is the day, is it? Can I be there?”

  “At the ceremony? No, of course not!” Noah said. She should have known better than to even make the request.

  “Just asking,” Jacqui said. “Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  Yes, it does. It showed a lack of respect for all three supports in the triangle. Although Noah had not expected any more of Jacqui.

  He did expect it of the three Terrans who took their places below Oliver. Isabelle Rhinehart; her younger sister, Kayla; and Kayla’s son had come into the World section of the Embassy only a week ago, but already the two women were trying to speak Worldese. The child, Austin, was only three—young enough to grow up trilling and clicking Worldese like a native. Noah gazed with envy at the little boy, who smiled shyly and then crawled onto his mother’s lap.

  But they could not hold Noah’s interest long. This was the day!

  His stomach growled. He’d been too excited to eat much of the food delivered earlier to his room. And truthfully, the vegetarian World diet was not exciting. But he would learn to like it. And what a small price to pay for . . . everything.

  The ceremony took place in the same room, right after breakfast. The other Terrans had left. Mee^hao¡ changed the wall program. Now instead of subtly shifting greens, the thin room dividers pulsed with the blue of loyalty alternating with the color of the clan of Mee^hao¡.

  Noah knelt in the middle of the circle of Worlders, facing Mee^hao¡, who held a long blue rod. Now I dub thee Sir Noah . . . Noah hated, completely hated, that his mind threw up that stupid thought. This was nothing like a feudal knighting. It was more like a baptism, washing him clean of his old self.

  Mee^hao¡ sang a verse of what he had been told was the family inclusion song, with everyone else echoing the chorus. Noah didn’t catch all the trilling and clicking words, but he didn’t have to. Tears pricked his eyes. It seemed to him that he had never wanted anything this much in life, had never really wanted anything at all.

  “Stand, brother mine,” Mee^hao¡ said.

  Noah stood. Mee^hao¡ did something with the rod, and the energy shield dissolved around Noah.

  Not only a baptism—an operation.

  The first breath of World air almost made him vomit. No, the queasiness was excitement, not the air. It tasted strange, and with the second panicky breath he felt he wasn’t getting enough of it. But he knew that was just the lower oxygen content. The Embassy was at sea level; the O2 concentration of World matched that at 12,000 feet. His lungs would adapt. His marrow would produce more red corpuscles. The Worlders had evolved for this; Noah would evolve, too.

  The air smelled strange.

  His legs buckled slightly, but before Llaa^moh¡, whom he had once known as Jones, could step toward him, Noah braced himself and smiled. He was all right. He was here. He was—

  “Brother mine” went around the circle, and then the formalities were over and they all hugged him, and for the first time in 150,000 years, Terran skin touched the skin of humans from the stars.

  MARIANNE

  The security officer met Marianne and Evan in their lab and conducted them to a euchre game in the observation area outside the BSL4 lab.

  From the first time she’d come here, Marianne had been appalled by the amateurishness of the entire setup. Granted, this was a bunch of scientists, not the CIA. Still, the Denebs had to wonder why euchre—or backgammon or chess or Monopoly, it varied—was being played here instead of at one of the comfortable Commons or cafeterias. Why two scientists were constantly at work in the negative-pressure lab even when they seemed to have nothing to do. Why the euchre players paid more attention to the screens monitoring the scientists’ vitals than to the card game.

  Dr. Julia Namechek and Dr. Trevor Lloyd. Both young, strong, and self-infected with spore disease. They moved around the BSL4 lab in full space suits, breathing tubes attached to the air supply in the ceiling. Surely the Denebs’ energy suits would be better for this kind of work, but the suits had not been offered to the Terrans.

  “When?” Marianne murmured, playing the nine of clubs.

  “Three days ago,” said a physician whose name Marianne had not caught.

  Spore disease (the name deliberately unimaginative, non-inflammatory) had turned up in mice after three days. Marianne was not a physician, but she could read a vitals screen. Neither Namechek nor Lloyd, busily working in their space suits behind glass, showed the slightest signs of infection. This was, in fact, the third time that the two had tried to infect themselves by breathing in the spores. Each occasion had been preceded by weeks of preparation. Those times, nothing had happened, either, and no one knew why.

  Physicians experimenting on themselves were not unknown in research medicine. Edward Jenner had infected himself—and the eight-year-old son of his gardener—with cowpox to develop the smallpox vaccine. Jesse William Lazear infected himself with yellow fever from mosquitoes, in order to confirm that mosquitoes were indeed the transmission vector. Julio Barrera gave himself Argentine hemorrhagic fever; Barry Marshall drank a solution H. pylori to prove the bacterium caused peptic ulcers; Pradeep Seth injected himself with an experimental vaccine for HIV.

  Marianne understood the reasons for the supposed secrecy of this experiment. The newspapers that came in on the mail runs glowed luridly with speculations about human experimentation aboard the Embassy. Journalists ignited their pages with “Goebbels,” “Guatemalan syphilis trials,” “Japanese Unit 731.” And those were the mainstream journalists. The tabloids and fringe papers invented so many details about Deneb atrocities on humans that the newsprint practically dripped with blood and body parts. The online news sources were, if anything, even worse. No, such “journalists”would never believe that Drs. Namechek and Ll
oyd had given spore disease to themselves and without the aliens’ knowing it.

  Actually, Marianne didn’t believe that, either. The Denebs were too intelligent, too technologically advanced, too careful. They had to know this experiment was going on. They had to be permitting it. No matter how benign and peaceful their culture, they were human. Their lack of interference was a way of ensuring CYA deniability.

  “Your turn, Dr. Jenner,” said Syed Sharma, a very formal microbiologist from Mumbai. He was the only player wearing a suit.

  “Oh, sorry,” Marianne said. “What’s trump again?”

  Evan, her partner, said, “Spades. Don’t trump my ace again.”

  “No table talk, please,” Sharma said.

  Marianne studied her hand, trying to remember what had been played. She had never been a good card player. She didn’t like cards. And there was nothing to see here, anyway. Evan could bring her the results, if any, of the clandestine experiment. It was possible that the two scientists had not been infected, after all—not this time nor the previous two. It was possible that the pathogen had mutated, or just hadn’t taken hold in these two particular people, or was being administered with the wrong vector. Stubbins Firth, despite heroic and disgusting measures, had never succeeded in infecting himself with yellow fever because he never understood how it was transmitted. Pathogen research was still part art, part luck.

  “I fold,” she said, before she remembered that “folding” was poker, not euchre. She tried a weak smile. “I’m very tired.”

  “Go to bed, Dr. Jenner,” said Seyd Sharma. Marianne gave him a grateful look, which he did not see as he frowned at his cards. She left.

  Just as she reached the end of the long corridor leading to the labs, the door opened and a security guard hurried through, face twisted with some strong emotion. Her heart stopped. What fresh disaster now? She said, “Did anything—” but before she could finish the question he had pushed past her and hurried on.