by Anthology
Mother Chrome nodded and halfway smiled. Then she said, “Today,” and took a huge breath. “Dr. Corvus and her staff are going to hold a press conference at noon. She wanted me to be warned. And thank me, I guess.”
My Chrome said, “Oh, my.”
I finally asked, “What is it? What's happening?”
They didn't hear me.
I got the two plates from the bar and announced, “These eggs smell gorgeous.”
The Chromatellas were trading looks, saying everything with their eyes.
Just hoping to be noticed, I said, “I'm awfully hungry, really. May I start?”
With the same voice, together, they told me, “Go on.”
But I couldn't eat alone. Not like that. So I walked up to my Chrome and put an arm up around her, saying, “Join me, darling.”
She said, “No.”
Smiling and crying at the same time, she confessed, “I'm not hungry anymore.”
She was the first new face in an entire week.
Even in Boreal City, with its millions from everywhere, there are only so many families and so many faces. So when I saw the doctor at the clinic, I was a little startled. And interested, of course. Dunlins are very social people. We love diversity in our friends and lovers, and everywhere in our daily lives.
“Dunlins have weak lungs,” I warned her.
She said, “Quiet,” as she listened to my breathing. Then she said, “I know about you. Your lungs are usually fine. But your immune system has a few holes in it.”
I was looking at her face. Staring, probably.
She asked if I was from the Great Delta. A substantial colony of Dunlins had built that port city in that southern district, its hot climate reminding us of our homeland back on Mother's Land.
“But I live here now,” I volunteered. “My sisters and I have a trade shop in the new mall. Have you been there?” Then I glanced at the name on her tag, blurting out, “I've never heard of the Chromatellas before.”
“That's because there aren't many of us,” she admitted.
“In Boreal?”
“Anywhere,” she said. Then she didn't mention it again.
In what for me was a rare show of self-restraint, I said nothing. For as long as we were just doctor and patient, I managed to keep my little teeth firmly planted on my babbling tongue. But I made a point of researching her name, and after screwing up my courage and asking her to dinner, I confessed what I knew and told her that I was sorry. “It's just so tragic,” I told her, as if she didn't know. Then desperate to say anything that might help, I said, “In this day and age, you just don't think it could ever happen anywhere.”
Which was, I learned, a mistake.
My Chrome regarded me over her sweet cream dessert, her beautiful eyes dry and her strong jaw pushed a little forward. Then she set down her spoon and calmly, quietly told me all of those dark things that doctors know, and every Chromatella feels in her blood:
Inoculations and antibiotics have put an end to the old plagues. Families don't have to live in isolated communities, in relative quarantine, fearing any stranger because she might bring a new flu bug, or worse. People today can travel far, and if they wish, they can live and work in the new cosmopolitan cities, surrounded by an array of faces and voices and countless new ideas.
But the modern world only seems stable and healthy.
Diseases mutate. And worse, new diseases emerge every year. As the population soars, the margin for error diminishes. “Something horrible will finally get loose,” Dr. Chromatella promised me. “And when it does, it'll move fast and it'll go everywhere, and the carnage is going to dwarf all of the famous old epidemics. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind.”
I am such a weakling. I couldn't help but cry into my sweet cream.
A strong hand reached across and wiped away my tears. But instead of apologizing, she said, “Vulnerability,” and smiled in a knowing way.
“What do you mean?” I sniffled.
“I want my daughters to experience it. If only through their mother's lover.”
How could I think of love just then?
I didn't even try.
Then with the softest voice she could muster, my Chrome told me, “But even if the worst does happen, you know what we'll do. We'll pick ourselves up again. We always do.”
I nodded, then whispered, “We do, don't we?”
“And I'll be there with you, my Dunnie.”
I smiled at her, surprising myself.
“Say that again,” I told her.
“I'll be with you. If you'll have me, of course.”
“No, that other part—”
“My Dunnie?”
I felt my smile growing and growing.
“Call up to the temple,” my Chrome suggested.
“Can't,” her mother replied. “The line blew down this summer, and nobody's felt inspired to put it up again.”
Both of them stared at the nearest clock.
I stared at my cooling eggs, waiting for someone to explain this to me.
Then Mother Chrome said, “There's that old television in the temple basement. We have to walk there and set it up.”
“Or we could eat,” I suggested. “Then drive.”
My Chrome shook her head, saying, “I feel like walking.”
“So do I,” said her mother. And with that both of them were laughing, their faces happier than even a giddy Dunlin's.
“Get your coat, darling,” said my Chrome.
I gave up looking at my breakfast.
Stepping out the back door, out into the chill wet air, I realized that the fog had somehow grown thicker. I saw nothing of the world but a brown yard with an old bird feeder set out on a tree stump, spilling over with grain, dozens of brown sparrows and brown-green finches eating and talking in soft cackles. From above, I could hear the ringing of the temple bells. They sounded soft and pretty, and suddenly I remembered how it felt to be a little girl walking between my big sisters, knowing that the Solstice ceremony would take forever, but afterward, if I was patient, there would come the feast and the fun of opening gifts.
Mother Chrome set the pace. She was quick for a woman of her years, her eyes flipping one way, then another. I knew that expression from my Chrome. She was obviously thinking hard about her phone call.
We were heading south, following an empty concrete road. The next house was long and built of wood, three stories tall and wearing a steeply pitched roof. People lived there. I could tell by the roof and the fresh coat of white paint, and when we were close, I saw little tractors for children to ride and old dolls dressed in farmer clothes, plus an antique dollhouse that was the same shape and color as the big house.
I couldn't keep myself from talking anymore.
I admitted, “I don't understand. What was that call about?”
Neither spoke, at first.
On the frosty sidewalk I could see the little shoeprints of children, and in the grass, their mothers' prints. I found myself listening for voices up ahead, and giggles. Yet I heard nothing but the bells. Suddenly I wanted to be with those children, sitting in the temple, nothing to do but sing for summer's return.
As if reading my mind, Mother Chrome said, “We have a beautiful temple. Did you see it in all my fog?”
I shook my head.“No.”
“Beautiful,” she repeated. “We built it from the local sandstone. More than a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Yes, ma'am,” I muttered.
Past the long house, tucked inside a grove of little trees, was a pig pen. There was a strong high fence, electrified and barbed. The shaggy brown adults glared at us, while their newest daughters, striped and halfway cute, came closer, begging for scraps and careless fingers.
I asked again, “What about that call? What' so important?”
“We were always a successful family,” said Mother Chrome. “My daughter's told you, I'm sure.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Mostly we were
farmers, but in the last few centuries, our real talents emerged. We like science and the healing arts most of all.”
My Chrome had told me the same thing. In the same words and tone.
We turned to the west, climbing up the hill toward the temple. Empty homes left empty for too long lined both sides of the little street. They were sad and sloppy, surrounded by thick stands of brown weeds. Up ahead of us, running from thicket, was a flock of wild pheasants, dark brown against the swirling fog.
“Chromatellas were a successful family,” she told me, “and relatively rich, too.”
Just before I made a fool of myself, I realized that Mother Chrome was trying to answer my questions.
“Nearly forty years ago, I was awarded a student slot at the Great Western Institute.” She looked back at me, then past me. “It was such a wonderful honor and a great opportunity. And of course my family threw a party for me. Complete with a parade. With my mother and my grand, I walked this route. This ground. My gown was new, and it was decorated with ribbons and flower blossoms. Everyone in Chromatella stood in two long lines, holding hands and singing to me. My sisters. My near-sisters. Plus travelers at the mother house, and various lovers, too.”
I was listening, trying hard to picture the day.
“A special feast was held in the temple. A hundred fat pigs were served. People got drunk and stood up on their chairs and told the same embarrassing stories about me, again and again. I was drunk for the first time. Badly. And when I finished throwing up, my mother and sisters bundled me up, made certain that my inoculation records were in my pocket, then they put me on the express train racing south.”
We were past the abandoned homes, and the bells were louder. Closer.
“When I woke, I had a premonition. I realized that I would never come home again. Which is a common enough premonition. And silly. Of course your family will always be there. Always, always. Where else can they be?”
Mother Chrome said those last words with a flat voice and strange eyes.
She was walking slower now, and I was beside her, the air tingling with old fears and angers. And that's when the first of the tombstones appeared: Coming out of the cold fog, they were simple chunks of fieldstone set on end and crudely engraved.
They looked unreal at first.
Ready to dissolve back into the fog.
But with a few more steps, they turned as real as any of us, and a breath of wind began blowing away the worst of the fog, the long hillside suddenly visible, covered with hundreds and thousands of crude markers, the ground in front of each slumping and every grave decorated with wild flowers: Easy to seed, eager to grow, requiring no care and perfectly happy in this city of ghosts.
When my great was alive, she loved to talk about her voyage from Mother's Land. She would describe the food she ate, the fleas in her clothes, the hurricane that tore the sails from the ship's masts, and finally the extraordinary hope she felt when the New Lands finally passed into view.
None of it ever happened to her, of course.
The truth is that she was born on the Great Delta. It was her grand who had ridden on the immigrant boat, and what she remembered were her grand's old stories. But isn't that the way with families? Surrounded by people who are so much like you, you can't help but have their large lives bleed into yours, and yours, you can only hope, into theirs.
Now the Chromatellas told the story together.
The older one would talk until she couldn't anymore, then her daughter would effortlessly pick up the threads, barely a breath separating their two voices.
Like our great cities, they said, the Institutes are recent inventions.
Even four decades ago, the old precautions remained in effect. Students and professors had to keep their inoculation records on hand. No one could travel without a doctor's certificate and forms to the plague Bureau. To be given the chance to actually live with hundreds and thousands of people who didn't share your blood—who didn't even know you a little bit—was an honor and an astonishment for the young Chromatella.
After two years, she earned honors and new opportunities. One of her professors hired her as a research assistant, and after passing a battery of immunological tests, the two of them were allowed up into the wild mountain country. Aboriginals still lived the old ways. Most kept their distance. But a brave young person came forward, offering to be their guide and provider and very best friend. Assuming, of course, that they would pay her and pay her well.
She was a wild creature, said Mother Chrome.
She hunted deer for food and made what little clothing she needed from their skins. And to make herself more beautiful to her sister-lover, she would rub her body and hair with the fresh fat of a bear.
In those days, those mountains were barely mapped.
Only a handful of biologists had even walked that
ground, much less made a thorough listing of its species.
As an assistant, Mother Chrome was given the simple jobs: She captured every kind of animal possible, by whatever means, measuring them and marking their location on the professor's maps, then killing them and putting them away for future studies. To catch lizards, she used a string noose. Nooses worked well enough with the broad-headed, slow-witted fence lizards. But not with the swift, narrow-headed whiptails. They drove her crazy. She found herself screaming and chasing after them, which was how she slipped on rocks and tumbled to the rocky ground below.
The guide came running.
Her knee was bleeding and a thumb was jammed. But the Chromatella was mostly angry, reporting what had happened, cursing the idiot lizards until she realized that her hired friend and protector was laughing wildly.
“All right,” said Mother Chrome. “You do it better!”
The guide rose and strolled over to the nearest rock pile, and after waiting forever with a rock's patience, she easily snatched up the first whiptail that crawled out of its crevice.
A deal was soon struck: One copper for each whiptail captured.
The guide brought her dozens of specimens, and whenever there was a backlog, she would sit in the shade and watch Mother Chrome at work. After a while, with genuine curiosity, the guide asked, “Why?” She held up a dull brown lizard, then asked, “Why do you put this one on that page, while the one in your hand goes on that other page?”
“Because they're different species,” Mother Chrome explained. Then she flipped it on its back, pointing and saying, “The orange neck is the difference. And if you look carefully, you can tell that they're not quite the same size.”
But the guide remained stubbornly puzzled. She shook her head and blew out her cheeks as if she was inflating a balloon.
Mother Chrome opened up her field guide. She found the right page and pointed. “There!” At least one field biologist had come to the same easy conclusion: Two whiptails, two species. Sister species, obviously. Probably separated by one or two million years of evolution, from the looks of it.
The guide gave a big snort.
Then she calmly put the orange neck into her mouth and bit off the lizard's head, and with a small steel blade, she opened up its belly and groin, telling Mother Chrome, “Look until you see it. Until you can.”
Chromatellas have a taste for details. With a field lens and the last of her patience, she examined the animal's internal organs. Most were in their proper places, but a few were misplaced, or they were badly deformed.
The guide had a ready explanation:
“The colorful ones are lazy ladies,” she claimed. “They lure in the drab ones with their colors, and they're the aggressors in love. But they never lay any eggs. What they do, I think, is slip their eggs inside their lovers. Then their lovers have to lay both hers and the mate's together, in a common nest.”
It was an imaginative story, and wrong.
But it took the professor and her assistant another month to be sure it was wrong, and then another few months at the Institute to realize what was really happening.
And at that point in the story, suddenly, the two Chromatellas stopped talking. They were staring at each other, talking again with their eyes.
We were in the oldest, uppermost end of the cemetery. The tombstones there were older and better made, polished and pink and carefully engraved with nicknames and birthdates and deathdates. The temple bells were no longer ringing. But we were close now. I saw the big building looming over us for a moment, then it vanished as the fog thickened again. And that's when I admitted, “I don't understand.” I asked my Chrome, “If the guide was wrong, then what's the right explanation?”
“The lizard is one species. But it exists in two forms.” She sighed and showed an odd little smile. “One form lays eggs. While the other one does nothing. Nothing but donate half of its genetic information, that is.”
I was lost.
I felt strange and alone, and lost, and now I wanted to cry, only I didn't know why. How could I know?
“As it happens,” said Mother Chrome, “a team of biologists working near the south pole were first to report a similar species. A strange bird that comes in two forms. It's the eggless form that wears the pretty colors.”
Something tugged at my memory.
Had my Chrome told me something about this, or did I read about it myself? Maybe from my days in school…maybe…?
“Biologists have found several hundred species like that,” said my Chrome. “Some are snakes. Some are mice. Most of them are insects.” She looked in my direction, almost smiling. “Of course flowering plants do this trick, too. Pollen is made by the stamen, and the genetics in the seeds are constantly mixing and remixing their genes. Which can be helpful. If your conditions are changing, you need to make new models to keep current. To evolve.”
Again, the temple appeared from the fog.
I had been promised something beautiful, but the building only looked tall and cold to me. The stone was dull and simple and sad, and I hated it. I had to chew on my tongue just to keep myself from saying what I was thinking.
What was I thinking?
Finally, needing to break up all this deep thinking, I turned to Mother Chrome and said, “It must have been exciting, anyway. Being one of the first to learn something like that.”