Maximum Light

by Nancy Kress

  “Please … listen.” Slowly the noise died. “Our only hope—hope for survival and justice—is to look at the truth. To uncover as much of it as we humanly can, and to flood what we uncover with maximum light. We might wish to preserve a more comforting dimness—but we can no longer afford to do so. What I have told you is fact. Many people know the story. Here is one it happened to personally.” And Shana pushed her way onstage, escorted by the chief of security.

  She stood very straight at the podium, her long blond hair tucked under her military cap. The bright lights glinted on the metal fittings of her dress uniform. Her young voice rang clear and strong.

  “My name is Private Shana Walders, United States Army. Two months ago I was kidnapped for vivifacture, but what I know started long before that. Other people are going to talk to you about my story, but first I’m going to tell it to you myself as clear as I can.”

  I wobbled back to my seat at the end of the row. Van wasn’t in it, and Eric Kinder had vanished. I listened to Shana, who was speaking slowly and grammatically (she’d been carefully rehearsed), but with a certain unseemly relish. Cameron Atuli would have been better, far more credible, but he wouldn’t testify. Even now he and Rob were slipping unnoticed from the press conference, preserving his last chance to dance as a dancer, not a notorious victimized freak. I hadn’t pressed him to speak. Enough had been taken from him already.

  As Shana talked, I closed my eyes. Offstage the others were in place to confirm, all those older and more sober others who would give credibility to her wild story. But the story was hers, and it was right that she tell it first.

  She was enjoying it, the little witch.

  I thought of Van, being escorted to his car in the underground tunnels of the Tipping Point. He would hear the remainder of the press conference on vid, an electromagnetic bomb shattering the rest of his life. I thought of the days to come: the feverish reporters, grim CEOs, hysterical public, defensive FBI, outraged politicians scrambling to align themselves right. And the international repercussions: trade agreements violated, accords broken. Whole economies built on trade with the United States would collapse, and their shaky governments fall. There would be threats of war, and perhaps war itself. Chaos, as Van had said. Built on his old and suffering body, that had been my friend.

  Better that than on the bodies of children.

  I listened to Shana, and tried to imagine how the world would change now, until my eyes simply couldn’t stay open anymore and gratefully I dozed off in my chair at the forgotten back corner of the stage.

  22

  SHANA WALDERS AND CAMERON ATULI

  The reporters keep me talking for over an hour, with the lights and cameras, and I love every minute of it.

  Me—Shana Walders—liar and thief. No fancy committee will ever call me those things again. I’m a hero who helped bust the illegal labs, and anybody who don’t remember that isn’t worth my spit. I’m Private Shana Walders, United States Army.

  “Private Walders, one more question—”

  “I think Private Walders has told us everything,” one of the scientists says at my elbow, and sort of shoves me aside. I start to cut her down, but then I remember that heroes don’t behave like that, so I nod and smile and walk off stage, my head high, and watch from the side. Security made sure no reporters don’t get backstage. So now the reporters fire questions at this scientist woman.

  “Dr. Futina, do you think the laws governing genetic experimentation need to be relaxed in order to allow research to proceed openly—instead of condoning it underground?”

  “It’s a complex issue,” Dr. Futina begins, and I tune out. The good stuff is over. I look for Nick, but he must of left. He looked pretty weak there near the end.

  I leave, too, and stroll around to the front of the building in case any reporters want to interview me some more. But they’re all inside, afraid of missing something. So I catch a cab back to the base.

  In the barracks Jennie Malone and Georgia Kimmel are fighting over a hairbrush.

  “It’s mine, hole-breath! I just bought it yesterday!”

  “Yeah, certainly. And the one you bought just happened to look exactly like mine.”

  “On! Give it to me!”

  “I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

  “Hey,” I say casually, “I was just on TV.”

  “Uh-huh,” Georgia says sarcastically, “and I’m a three-star general.”

  “I was! You can probably see it on the news tonight!”

  Jennie says threateningly, “You got just one more chance to give me my brush, Georgia Kimmel. Just one.”

  I say, “I just brought down a government, for Chrissake!”

  “All right, Georgia, I warned you!”

  Jennie grabs for Georgia, who starts slugging. Stewdees, both of them. I march out of the barracks.

  Two fairly young guys from Company B walk past, in civvies. “Hey, Private, you got leave? Want to go into town with us for some fun?”

  They’re not bad looking, although nothing to put on vid screens. Maybe a week ago I’d of gone. But now I don’t want to. Getting drunk or reconfigured or laid just don’t appeal to me. I say, “Can’t. I was on TV today, and I still got some details to clear up.”

  “Oh? You on a sex channel?” And they laugh like the morons they are and go catch the train to town.

  I mope around some more. An hour ago I was on top of the world, and now I’m nothing. What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t figure it out, and I can’t stand trying to figure it out, so after a while I go get on the train, too, but not to go to the bars. Better than staying around here with this bunch of hole-breaths who don’t give a damn what’s going on in the world.

  Nobody’s home at Nick’s. But there are reporters ringing the house.

  I stay back, chewing on my thumb and considering. I could go up to them and just like that, they’d all want to talk to me. I’m still in uniform. I could tell my story again, to people who have the brains to see how important it is. But suddenly I don’t want to. I said it all at the press conference, and nothing is going to be no different if I say it all again. For the first time, I realize why Nick isn’t at home. He don’t want to talk to reporters any more today neither.

  So he won’t be at Sallie’s in Atlanta, because the reporters will go there, too. And to Laurie’s. He really won’t want them at Laurie’s, now that she … So where is he?

  Somewhere private, with the rest of his family.

  I don’t have to think long. When I lived at Nick’s, I went through all his deebees. He and Maggie own a cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia. Nick bought it during the Tipping Point, and he put it in a different name. It was supposed to be a safe hidey-hole or some such shit. I don’t remember the address, or even the town, but I do remember the name he put it under, because it’s so weird: Muzio Mercy. Finding the place would be an interesting challenge.

  I start to feel a little better.

  Public deebees of property, first. I’m no pro searcher, but I can usually figure out how to get around in libraries. I could use a public terminal. But not dressed like this—finding Nick is sort of an undercover game, so I shouldn’t be conspicuous. Well, I can stop at a store and buy me some jeans. I got my pay. First, a public terminal.…

  And those Company B soldiers think that “fun” is getting reconfigured and bothering people. What a bunch of kids.

  * * *

  They’re out there. I don’t know where, but I can sense them.

  The evening following the press conference, I dance Firebird to Stravinsky’s raucous music. The huge, overbearing jetés of my entrances soar so high that I seem to hang in the air, suspended, before I land. The audience gasps at my entrechats, when I leap straight up and beat my legs together front and back, three and even four times before landing, like some huge caged eagle. My exits are followed by crashing applause and standing ovations. No one knows it is all fueled by desperation.

  A role usuall
y danced by a woman, Mr. C. has reenvisioned the magical bird as male: muscular, energetic, restless. Mr. C. has also set the ballet in an anonymous modern city. The set is all holos of towering skyscrapers and rushing maglevs and blinking signs, all of which dim and still only when the Firebird is on stage. I wear a costume almost completely holo, with dazzling red and gold plumage and a mask that is at once alien bird and human wildness. The prince and princess are small people in modern dress, diminished by their surroundings. The idea is that the Firebird rescues them from more than the evil magician—he rescues them from the dehumanization of their own world, through the power of his older, more potent, and centered magic.

  “Some of Stravinsky’s works,” a critic wrote long ago, “are designed as a means of escape from reality.”

  * * *

  It’s after midnight when I knock on the door of Nick’s mountain cabin, and blacker out than I never thought possible. No lights—probably they’re all asleep—no moon, no stars. I never saw such dark. The mountains are a whole other program.

  The cabin sits by itself at the end of a dirt road. After I found out the county it was in, I took a train to the biggest town and rented a car. That was really expensive, but by this time nothing is going to stop me, including not having no driver’s license. I slipped the man behind the counter fifty bucks. I could of got it for nothing, from the way he looked at my tits, but I wasn’t in the mood for all that.

  For an hour I taught myself to drive the car. Nothing to it. Machines don’t bother me. Then I printed an area map off a terminal in a gas station, and drove up. And I do mean up. The cabin is halfway up a mountain, and if I’d of known how many roads just drop off to one side, I might not of come. Real freezy. But here I am. The air smells of pine trees, and a breeze blows leaves around my feet, though it’s too dark to see them. I only found the cabin because the rental car had a flashlight. This is the butt end of no place.

  Still … it’s kind of nice.

  I pound on the door, and after a while a porch light goes on and John opens the door. “Shana! What the—”

  “Shana?” Maggie says. She’s right behind her son, knotting a robe around her waist. She scowls. “What are you doing here, and at this hour?”

  “Visiting,” I say brightly. “Don’t worry, Maggie, nobody’s following me. I made sure of that. Where’s Nick?”

  “Sleeping. And I’m not going to wake him, either. He needs his rest.”

  Well, that’s true, anyway. Even if Maggie’s being bitchy about it. I say, “Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.”

  And even then both John and her hesitate before they step aside. You’d think rich people would have better manners.

  “All right, come in,” Maggie says. “But I’m warning you, Shana, any publicity seeking you’re still after is not going to happen here. I don’t know how you even found this place. It’s a private family residence.”

  John adds, “And you’re not family. However much you might impose.”

  For a minute it hurts, then I’m mad. Don’t these people realize what I did for them? For the country? Nick’s the only one of them with any class, and Nick is asleep. Also weak and old. I’m about to light into John and Maggie when I realize that even though Nick might be asleep, nobody else is. There’s a cry from some back room, and then another, and then Laurie comes in carrying the baby.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen it.

  Its face is all screwed up, red and yelling over Laurie’s shoulder. She pats it on the back and jounces it up and down. The little thing is wearing a one-piece fuzzy yellow sleeper with feet. All I can see is its face and little fat fists.

  John says sulkily, “Your knocking woke up Timmy.”

  “Sorry,” I say, but I can’t take my eyes off the baby.

  “Poor little snookums,” Laurie says, which is enough to make you throw up. But Laurie looks happy. Tired and pale, but still happy. I step closer to get a better look at the baby, yelling its head off.

  Maggie steps in to block me. “Since you’re here, Shana, I suppose you’ll need to stay the rest of the night. I’ll make up the sofa for you, which I’m afraid is all we have to offer. John, dear, get sheets and blankets from the storeroom.”

  John slopes off, still sulking. It don’t look attractive on a man his age. Maggie stands between me and the baby, which Laurie is still patting on the back and jouncing up and down. It stops yelling.

  Maggie says quietly, “What exactly are you doing here, Shana?”

  It’s a good question. I don’t have no answer. Getting here was a challenge, something to do … but now that I did it, the thrill is gone. What do I really need to see Nick for, anyway? Our plans are all over. They worked, and Nick got going the investigations he wanted—both investigations, the chemical one and the crime one. And both of them in ways so public that now they can’t be stopped. Our part is over, Nick and me. So just what am I doing here?

  Besides getting depressed.

  I let Maggie make up the sofa and I lay down on it. I close my eyes. Maggie stays up a bit, fussing at her grandkid and watching me, but when I pretend to sleep she finally goes back to bed. I sit up. Across the room Laurie, little in a huge old wooden rocking chair, nurses the baby.

  I blurt, “How come you can do that? You didn’t get stuffed and give birth!”

  Laurie laughs. “No. But there are artificial hormones to turn on the lactation process. And my milk is going through a filter to remove the synthetic additives. See?”

  I can’t help myself, even though it makes my skin crawl. I have to see what she’s nursing. I get off the sofa and look down at where the baby rests on her lap. There’s some sort of device between her tit and the baby’s mouth, with a glass bowl cupping her skin and a plastic nipple in the baby’s mouth. In between is a sort of shallow box filled with wads of pinkish stuff that the baby’s sucking makes the milk pass through.

  The baby’s eyes are closed, though its little mouth is working hard. Now that it’s stopped yelling, I can see its features clear, and I know right away what’s wrong with it.

  It isn’t what I thought.

  “We’ve only had him three weeks,” Laurie says softly, touching the baby’s cheek, “and already I can’t imagine life without him. He needs us so much.”

  “You’re happy,” I say, experimental-like.

  “Oh, yes, so happy! I always wanted this.… I needed this. And look at him … isn’t he amazing?”

  She means it. I look at the baby, and I actually think Maybe a chimp would be better. I really think that. With a chimp, you wouldn’t expect it to grow up, would you? You wouldn’t expect it to learn to talk and read and get excited about going to grandma’s, so you wouldn’t be disappointed. But with a baby like this … does Laurie know this baby will never do any cute-kid things, not even the cute-kid things a chimp could do? That this baby probably won’t even sit up, ever, or talk or walk or grow up into a son who does stuff to be proud of? Of course Laurie knows. If I know, she knows. She’s seen the same pictures in the news, the flattened face and wide-set eyes and all the rest that goes with the almost-empty mind. The pictures are everywhere, because more and more of these babies are being born, with half their brains not working right. Or hardly not at all. It’s due to the endocrine-disrupter synthetics, Nick says.

  Most of those kids are aborted before birth. But not this one. And Laurie and John adopted him, because it’s their only shot at becoming parents.

  For the first time, I realize what those chimps with Cameron Atuli’s face really mean.

  Laurie says, “Do you want to hold him when he’s done nursing?”

  “No thanks,” I say, real fast. “I don’t much like any babies.” Which is true. Even normal ones. Smelly demanding little blobs.

  Laurie laughs. She’s so gone on this kid she can’t get offended. She glows with that kind of happiness you can’t fake, the kind that goes down under tiredness and problems and everything else. I shake my head and go
back to bed.

  Just the same, I feel a little lost. Laurie at least knows what she wants.

  * * *

  The ballet is an enormous success. I take nine curtain calls. I bow beside Caroline, who is radiant and panting as she holds her flowers, sinking again and again into her reverence. We will go on to perform Firebird in Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rome, and London. And the more cities I dance in, the more famous I become, the greater the chance of my unmasking.

  Because they are out there—the reporters digging deeper every day into “the story of the new century.” They are exposing everything, writing about it endlessly. Digging into the horrors of the illegal vivifacturers and their monstrous research.

  Digging into the extent of the governmental coverup, with its fascinating question: How high up did knowledge extend of the “conspiracy of criminal silence?”

  Digging into the dangers of synthetic endocrine disrupters.

  Digging into the specific events leading to Dr. Clementi’s sensational news conference.

  Digging into everything. Eventually they will come to the vivifactured chimps with my face, and after that they will come to me.

  At intermission Rob, hovering in the wings, urges me to have my own face vivifactured into something different. Maybe I will. Except that I don’t really believe that would stop the reporters for very long. They’re inevitable, like death.

  After they find me, I will never dance again as only a dancer. I will be a freak, not an artist. So I dance now, hurling myself across stage with a speed and power I never before possessed. Time is short, and I have to do with it what I can, even though there is no firm ground beneath my feet and I know that I am dancing on nothing but blowing air.

  I try not to think of it. I try to empty my mind, to become nothing but the music, the steps, the rhythm, the Firebird.

  While I can, I dance.

  * * *

  The next afternoon Nick and I go for a walk in the woods surrounding his cabin. He hobbles along, leaning on his stick. It’s got a lot of medical stuff built right into it, sensory fields and alarm systems and emergency patches. I hold up his other arm. It isn’t much of a walk, but at least it gets us away from the others. A hundred yards from the cabin we sit on a big tipped-over log in the fall sunshine. The mountains around us are bright with colored leaves: red and yellow and orange and brown and I don’t know what all. Fall sure don’t look like this in the city.