The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  I took a cab home. Deborah had never mentioned that the City Ballet prima ballerina was protected by a bioenhanced Doberman. She knew I’d written the story about the ballerina murders. Anton Privitera hadn’t mentioned it, either, in his press conference about dancer safety. I wondered why not. While I was parceling out wonder, I devoted some to the question of City Ballet’s infrequent, superficial, and always-positive bioscans. Shouldn’t a company devoted to the religion of “natural art” be more zealous about ferreting out heretics?

  Unless, of course, somebody didn’t really want to know.

  Privitera? But that was hard to reconcile with his blazing, intolerant sincerity.

  It occurred to me that I had never seen an admittedly bioenhanced dancer perform. Until tonight, I’d gone to finished performances rarely and only with Deborah, who of course scorned such perverts and believed that they had nothing to teach her.

  She was out when I got back to our apartment. Each week, it seemed, she was gone more. I fell asleep, waiting for her to come home.

  7.

  Snow falls. It is cold. Caroline and I walk to Lincoln Center. A man takes Caroline’s purse. He runs. Caroline says “Shit!” Then she says, “Angel? Go stop him!” She drops my leash.

  I run and jump on the man. He screams. I do not hurt him. Caroline says stop him. She does not say attack him. So I stand on the man’s chest and growl and nip at his foreleg. He brings out a knife. Then I bite him. He drops the knife and screams again. The police come.

  “Holy shit,” Caroline says to me. “You really do that. You really do.”

  “I protect Caroline,” I say.

  Caroline talks to police. Caroline talks to reporters. I get a steak to eat.

  I am happy.

  The snow goes away. The snow is there many many days, but it goes away. We visit Caroline’s mother’s house for two more parties in the basement. It gets warm in the park. Ducks live in the water again. Flowers grow. Caroline says not to dig up flowers.

  I lie backstage. Caroline dances on stage. John and Mr. Privitera stand beside me. They smell unhappy. John’s shoes smell of tar and food and leaves and cats and other good things. I sniff John’s shoes.

  “She looks exhausted,” John says. “She’s giving it everything she’s got, but it’s just not there, Anton.”

  Mr. Privitera says no words. He watches Caroline dance.

  “William Scholes attacked again in the Times. He said that watching her had become painful—‘like watching a reed grown stiff and brittle.’”

  “I will talk to her again,” Mr. Privitera says.

  “Scholes called the performance ‘a travesty,’” John says.

  Caroline comes backstage. She limps. She wipes her face with a towel. She smells afraid.

  “Dear, I’d like to see you,” Mr. Privitera says.

  We go to Caroline’s dressing room. Caroline sits down. She trembles. Her body smells sick. I growl. Caroline puts a hand on my head.

  Mr. Privitera says, “First of all, dear, I have good news for all of us. The police have caught that unspeakable murderer who killed Jennifer Lang and the ABT dancer.”

  Caroline sits up a little straighter. Her smell changes. “They did! How?”

  “They caught him breaking into the Plaza Hotel room where Marie D’Arbois is staying while she guests with ABT.”

  “Is Marie—”

  “She’s fine. She wasn’t alone, she had a lover or something with her. The madman just got careless. The police are holding back the details. Marie, of course, is another of those bioenhanced dancers. I don’t know if you ever saw her dance.”

  “I did,” Caroline says. “I thought she was wonderful.”

  Caroline and Mr. Privitera look hard at each other. They smell ready to attack. But they do not attack. I am confused. Mr. Privitera is safe. He may touch Caroline.

  Mr. Privitera says, “We must all be grateful to the police. Now there’s something else I need to discuss with you, dear.”

  Caroline closes her hand on my fur. She says, “Yes?”

  “I want you to take a good long rest, dear. You know your dancing has deteriorated. You tell me you’re not doing drugs or working sketchily, and I believe you. Sometimes it helps a dancer to take a rest from performing. Take class, eat right, get strong. In the fall we’ll see.”

  “You’re telling me you’re cutting me from the summer season at Saratoga.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Caroline is quiet. Then she says, “There’s nothing wrong with me. My timing has just been a little off, that’s all.”

  “Then take the summer to work on your timing. And everything else.”

  Mr. Privitera and Caroline look hard at each other again. Caroline’s hand still pulls my fur. It hurts a little. I do not move.

  Mr. Privitera leans close to Caroline. “Listen, dear. Jewels was one of your best roles. But tonight…And not just Jewels. You wobbled and wavered through Starscape. Your Nikiya in the ‘Shades’ section of La Bayadere was…embarrassing. There is no other word. You danced as if you had never learned the steps. And you couldn’t even complete the Don Quixote pas de deux at the gala.”

  “I fell! Dancers get injured all the time! My injury rate compared to—”

  “You’ve missed rehearsals and even performances,” Mr. Privitera said. He stands up. “I’m sorry, dear. Take the summer. Rest. Work. In the fall, we’ll see.”

  Caroline says, “What about the last two weeks of the season?”

  Mr. Privitera says, “I’m sorry, dear.”

  He walks to the door. He puts his hand on the door. He says, “Oh, at least you won’t have to be burdened with that dog anymore. Now that the madman’s been caught, I’ll have John notify the protection agency to come pick it up.”

  Caroline raises her head. Her fur all stands up. She smells angry. Soon she runs out the door. Mr. Privitera is gone. She runs to the offices. “John! John, you bastard!”

  The office hall is dark. The doors do not open. John is not here.

  Caroline runs up steps to the offices. She falls. She falls down some of the steps and hits the wall. She lies on the floor. She holds her hind foot and smells hurt.

  “Angel,” she says. “Go get somebody to help me.”

  I go to the lounge. One dancer is there. She says, “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know that anybody—Angel?”

  “Caroline is hurt,” I say. “Come. Come fast.”

  She comes. Caroline says, “Who are you? No, wait—Deborah, right? From the corps?”

  “No, I’m not…I haven’t been invited to join the corps yet. I’m a student at SAB. I’m just here a lot…Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

  “Help me up,” Caroline says. “Angel, Deborah is safe.”

  Deborah tries to pick up Caroline. Caroline makes a little noise. She cannot stand. Deborah gets John. He picks up Caroline.

  “It’s nothing,” she says. “No doctor. Just get me a cab…dammit, John, don’t fuss, it’s nothing!” She looks at John hard. “You want to take Angel away from me.”

  John smells surprised. He says, “Who told you that?”

  “His Majesty himself. But now you’ve decided whatever you thought I was doing so privately doesn’t matter anymore, is that right?”

  “It’s a mistake. Of course you can keep the dog. Anton doesn’t understand,” John says. He smells angry.

  “No, I’ll just bet he doesn’t,” Caroline says. “You might have picked a kinder way to tell me I’m through at City Ballet.”

  “You’re not through, Caroline,” John says. Now he smells bad. His words are not right. He smells like the man who takes Caroline’s purse.

  “Right,” Caroline says. She sits in the cab.

  Deborah steps back. She smells surprised.

  “I’m keeping the dog,” Caroline says. “So we’re in agreement, aren’t we, John? Come on, Angel. Let’s go home.”

  We go to class. Caroline cannot dance. She tries and then stops. She sits in a co
rner. Mr. Privitera sits in another corner. Caroline watches Deborah. The dancers raise one hind leg. They spin and jump.

  Madame holds up her hand. The music stops. “Deborah, let us see that again, s’il vous plais. Alone.”

  The other dancers move away. They look at each other. They smell surprised. The music starts again and Deborah raises one hind leg very high. She spins and jumps.

  Mr. Privitera says, “Let me see the bolero from Coppelia. Madame says you know it.”

  “Y-yes,” Deborah says. She dances alone.

  “Very nice, dear,” Mr. Privitera says. “You are much improved.”

  The other dancers look at each other again.

  Everybody dances.

  Caroline watches Deborah hard.

  8.

  Deborah’s face looked like every Christmas morning in the entire world. She grabbed both my hands. “They invited me to join the company!”

  My suitcase lay open on the bed, surrounded by discarded clothes I wasn’t taking to the bioenhancement conference in Paris. My daughter picked up a pile of spidersilk blouses and hurled them into the air. In the soft April air from the open window the filmy, artificial material drifted and danced. “I can’t believe it! They asked me to join the company! I’m in!”

  She whirled around the tiny room, rising on toe in her street shoes, laughing and exclaiming. My silence went unnoticed. Deborah did an arabesque to the bedpost, then plopped herself down on my best dress. “Don’t you want to know what happened, Mom?”

  “What happened, Deborah?”

  “Well, Mr. Privitera came to watch class, and Madame asked me to repeat the variation alone. God, I thought I’d die. Then Mr. Privitera—not Madame—asked me to do the bolero from Coppelia. For an awful minute I couldn’t remember a single step. Then I did, and he said it was very nice! He said I was much improved!”

  Accolades from the king. But even in my numbness I could see there was something she wasn’t telling me.

  “I thought you told me the company doesn’t choose any new dancers this close to the end of the season?”

  She sobered immediately. “Not usually. But Caroline Olson was fired. She missed rehearsals and performances, and she wasn’t even taking the trouble to prepare her roles. Her reviews have been awful.”

  “I saw them,” I said.

  Deborah looked at me sharply. “Ego, I guess. Caroline’s always been sort of a bitch. So apparently they’re not letting her go to Saratoga, because Tina Patrochov and a guest artist are dividing her roles, and Mr. Privitera told Jill Kerrigan to learn Tina’s solo from Sleeping Beauty. So that left a place in the corps de ballet, and they chose me!”

  I had had enough time to bring myself to say it.

  “Congratulations, sweetheart.”

  “When does your plane for Paris leave?”

  This non-sequitur—if it was that—turned me back to my packing. “Seven tonight.”

  “And you’ll be gone ten days. You’ll have a great time in Paris. Maybe the next time the company goes on tour, I’ll go with them!”

  She whirled out of the room.

  I sat at the end of the bed, holding onto the bedpost. When Deborah was three, she’d wanted a ride on a camel. Somehow it had become an obsession. She talked about camels in daycare, at dinnertime, at bedtime. She drew pictures of camels, misshapen things with one huge hump. Camels were in short supply in St. Louis. Ignore it, everyone said, kids forget these things, she’ll get over it. Deborah never forgot. She didn’t get over it. Pers had just left us, and I was consumed with the anxiety of a single parent. Finally I paid a friend to tie a large wad of hay under a blanket on his very old, very swaybacked horse. A Peruvian camel, I told my three-year-old. A very special kind. You can have a ride.

  “That’s not a camel,” Deborah had said, with nostril-lifted disdain. “That’s a heffalunt!”

  I read last week in World that the animal-biotech scientists have built a camel with the flexible trunk of an elephant. The trunk can lift up to forty-five pounds. It was expected to be a useful beast of burden in the Sahara.

  I finished packing for Paris.

  Paris in April was an unending gray drizzle. The book and software stalls along the Seine kept up their electronic weather shields, giving them the hazy, streaming-gutter look of abandoned outhouses. The gargoyles on Notre Dame looked insubstantial in the rain, irrelevant in the face of camels with trunks. The French, as usual, conspired to make Americans—especially Americans who speak only rudimentary French—feel crass and barbaric. My clothes were wrong. My desire for a large breakfast was wrong. The Fifth International Conference on Human Bioenhancement had lost my press credentials.

  The conference was held in one of the huge new hotels in Neuilly, near the Eurodisney Gene Zoo. I couldn’t decide if this was an attempt to provide entertainment or irony. Three hundred scientists and doctors, a hundred press, and at least that many industrial representatives, plus groupies, thronged the hotel. The scientists presented papers; the industrial reps, mostly from biotech or pharmaceutical firms, presented “infoforums.” The moment I walked in, carrying provisional credentials, I felt the tension, a peculiar kind of tension instantly recognizable to reporters. Something big was going on. Big and unpleasant.

  From the press talk in the bar I learned that the presentation to not miss was Thursday night by Dr. Gerard Taillebois of the Pasteur Research Institute, in conjunction with Dr. Greta Erbland of Steckel und Osterhoff. This pairing of a major research facility with a commercial biotech firm was common in Europe. Sometimes the addition of a hospital made it a triumvirate. A hand-written addendum on the program showed that the presentation had been moved from the Napoleon Room to the Grand Ballroom. I checked out the room; it was approximately the size of an airplane hangar. Hotel employees were setting up acres of chairs.

  I asked a garçon to point out Dr. Taillebois to me. He was a tall, bald man in his sixties or seventies who looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.

  Wednesday night I went to the Paris Opera Ballet. The wet pavement in front of the Opera House gleamed like black patent leather. Patrons dripped jewels and fur. This gala was why Michael had funded my trip; my first ballet article for New York Now had proved popular, despite its vapidity. Or maybe because of it. Tonight the famous French company was dancing an eclectic program, with guest artists from the Royal Ballet and the Kirov. Michael wanted 5,000 words on the oldest ballet company in the world.

  I watched bioenhanced British dancers perform the wedding pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty, with its famous fish dives; Danish soloists in twentieth-century dances by Georges Balanchine; French ballerinas in contemporary works by their brilliant choreographer Louis Dufort. All of them were breathtaking. In the new ballets, especially choreographed for these bioenhanced bodies, the dancers executed sustained movements no natural body would have been capable of making at all, at a speed that never looked machine-like. Instead the dancers were flashes of light: lasers, optic signals, nerve impulses surging across the stage and triggering pleasure centers in the brains of the delighted audience.

  I gaped at one pas de trois in which the male dancer lifted two women at once, holding them aloft in swallow lifts over his head, one on each palm, then turning them slowly for a full ninety seconds. It wasn’t a bench-pressing stunt. It was the culmination of a yearning, lyrical dance, as tender as any in the great nineteenth-century ballets. The female dancers were lowered slowly to the floor, and they both flowed through a fouette of adage as if they hadn’t any bones.

  Not one dancer had been replaced in the evening’s program due to injury. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen a performance of the New York City Ballet without a last-minute substitution.

  During intermission, profoundly depressed, I bought a glass of wine in the lobby. The eddying crowd receded for a moment, and I was face to face with Anna Olson, seated regally in her powerchair and flanked by her bodyguards. Holding tight to her hand was a little girl of five or six,
dressed in a pink party dress and pink tights, with wide blue eyes, black hair, and a long slim neck. She might have been Caroline Olson twenty years ago.

  “Ms. Olson,” I said.

  She looked at me coldly, without recognition.

  “I’m Susan Matthews. We met at the private reception for Anton Privitera at Georgette Allen’s,” I lied.

  “Yes?” she said, but her eyes raked me. My dress wasn’t the sort that turned up at the private fundraisers of New York billionaires. I didn’t give her a chance to cut me.

  “This must be your—” granddaughter? Caroline, an only child, had never interrupted her dancing career for pregnancy. Niece? Grandniece? “—your ward.”

  “Je m’appelle Marguerite,” the child said eagerly. “Nous regardons le ballet.”

  “Do you study ballet, Marguerite?”

  “Mais oui!” she said scornfully, but Anna Olson made a sign and the bodyguards deftly cut me off from both of them. By maneuvering around the edge of the hall, I caught a last, distant glimpse of Marguerite. She waited patiently in line to go back to her seat. Her small feet in pink ballet slippers turned out in a perfect fifth position.

  Thursday afternoon I drove into Paris to rent an electronic translator for the presentation by Taillebois and Erbland. The translators furnished by the conference were long since claimed. People who had rented them for the opening talks simply hung onto them, afraid to miss anything. The Taillebois/Erbland presentation would include written handouts in French, English, German, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, but not until the session was over. I was afraid to miss anything, either.

  I couldn’t find an electronic translator with a brand name I trusted. I settled for a human named Jean-Paul, from a highly recommended commercial agency. He was about four feet ten, with sad brown eyes and a face wrinkled into fantastic crevasses. He told me he had translated for Charles de Gaulle during the crisis in Algeria. I believed him. He looked older than God.