by Nancy Kress
"When she thinks they're sad or angry or hurt. Taney, you said it was my turn to ask questions today."
"Yes."
He crowded close to her, smelling terrible. “You said the first world was to keep us safe. But the feeder broke and we were hungry and then the first world broke, Taney, it broke, and all this other world was out here. Why did you say the first world would keep us safe?"
"A safeguard,” Katherine said, and wasn't sure what she was saying. “Oh, the bastards—an antidotal safeguard for the first researchers. In her saliva."
"What?"
"Thousands of compounds in saliva. We couldn't possibly have tested them all."
"What—"
"Taney,” Jana said sternly from the floor, “stop crying. There's nothing to cry about. We found you.... Stop it, please, Taney, stop it before my kindness gets all used up."
* * * *
The real fight was just beginning, she knew that. It would rage on so many fronts: medical, military, political, even journalistic if they drove her to that. So much energy would be required, so much strategy. She had won ten years ago but she was older now, and much more tired.
Nonetheless, her mind was already marshalling arguments. The enemy's research division had been thoroughly destroyed, and so had its personnel. But there was no guarantee that the bombs had actually gotten them all; there had never been any guarantee. The enemy was supposedly our ally now, but if the world situation changed again ... and things always changed. A biological antidote was the first step toward a vaccine ... No, Mr. President, tissue samples cannot provide the same mechanisms as a living organism....
Katherine, driving the DDR mobile across the Mojave, glanced back over her shoulder at Kim, the only ugly and unappealing child of the four. Kim, erratic about controlling her bowels, screaming like a stuck siren, forever licking the faces of people she loved. A child no one would want, a child likely to have been stuck in the back ward of some institution somewhere, while the other three babies would have been adopted, cuddled, loved. Kim, now the most important child on the planet.
"It's my turn now!” Jana said.
"In a minute,” Li answered, just as the computer said, “Cat. ‘Cat’ starts with ‘c.’ Say ‘kuh’ for ‘c'."
"Kuh,” Li and Jana said simultaneously, and the computer broke into congratulatory song. Li and Jana laughed with excitement.
Sudie suddenly appeared beside the driver's seat. “Taney,” she said seriously, “Now that the real world got broke, are you going to keep us safe?"
Medical fights, military fights, political fights, journalistic fights. Katherine's knee throbbed. The desert shimmered in front of her, murderous with heat, the earthquake disaster behind. Katherine was nearly seventy years old, and her knee hurt.
"Yes, dear heart, I am,” she said, and drove on across the desert, toward the next world.
—THE END—
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