Nothing Human

by Nancy Kress

  “No,” Pam said. “Another room is where you’ll spend most of your time. Come.”

  It took a while for everyone to obey. Some were in the woods, some inspecting flowers. Jason, the showoff, had actually taken off his running shoes and socks and waded into the pond. Derek and Mike were checking out the basketball court.

  Pam waited patiently while Jon, Lillie, and the energetic Madison rounded everyone up.

  “This is the most important part of your ship,” Pam said, and Lillie noted the wording. Your ship. What was their ship? “Follow me. Come.”

  “She sure is bossy,” Sajelle said, but not very loud.

  Pam led them to a room reached through a door in the garden wall; Pete waited there. The room looked pretty boring. More metal tables and moldable tan chairs. Two walls were lined with closed cupboards.

  Pam said, “This is the school.”

  Lillie and Jon looked at each other. Derek said with comic exaggeration, “Say what?”

  “The school,” Pam said.

  Madison said, “We’re going to school here?”

  “Yes, of course,” Pete said.

  Lillie was the first to break a long silence. “What are we going to learn?” Somehow she couldn’t imagine Pam and Pete teaching American history or Great Expectations.

  “You’re going to learn the right way. As much of it as you can.”

  “The right way?” Lillie repeated, sounding to herself like an idiot. “You mean, we’re going to learn genetics?”

  “Yes. But not until tomorrow. We have made the ship to follow your day-night patterns. In a few hours the lights will dim for sleep. They will come back on eight hours later for washing, breakfast, and then school. You have a great deal to learn, you know. But it will be fun.

  “You’ll love it.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “No way,” Jessica said. “Not me. None of that school shit.”

  They were all over the garden, in groups of two or three or four. Lillie had thrown herself full length on the grass, which had that wonderful just-mowed smell. Sajelle and Madison lounged with her, and Jessica had barged in.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Madison demanded. “Walk out into space?”

  “Not going to do anything about it, just not go. Are you always such a good little follower, Maddy?”

  “Don’t call me that. It’s not my name, Jess-sick.”

  “I’ll call you what I want, bitch.”

  Lillie sat up. “Stop it, Jessica. We can’t fight. We might need each other.”

  “For what?” Jessica jeered, but she didn’t answer Madison. Sajelle said, “I don’t want to go to no school, neither.”

  “Why not?” Lillie said. Sajelle wasn’t usually nasty.

  “Just don’t want to.”

  Lillie considered Sajelle. She knew Sajelle had come from what Uncle Keith called “a tough neighborhood.” Uncle Keith … she had hardly thought about him at all, hardly missed him. Was that right? Again the nagging doubt tugged at her mind, the same that had bothered her when she realized she couldn’t picture any of the kids that had died in the bombing.

  Jessica said, “Sajelle doesn’t want to be bothered with school because she’s too busy missing DeWayne.”

  “You shut up, bitch!”

  “Come on, Sajelle. You know you and DeWayne were getting it on back at Andrews.”

  Sajelle swung on Jessica, who ducked expertly. Instantly Lillie scrambled to her knees and thrust herself between them. “Stop it! We can’t afford to fight!”

  “Little Mother Superior. You’re as bad as Elizabeth,” Jessica said, rose to her feet, and strolled toward the basketball court, where all the boys except Rafe, plus Bonnie Carson, had organized a game.

  “She’s bad news,” Madison said. “I don’t know why the pribir engineered her.”

  “They didn’t engineer her personality,” Lillie said. “Not any of our personalities or intelligence or stuff like that. We’re too different.”

  “You can say that again.” Madison stood and stretched. “Sajelle, it’s none of my business, but were you getting it on with DeWayne?”

  “You right. It’s none of your business.”

  Madison didn’t look offended. “Well, I want a shower before dinner. Anybody coming?”

  “Not yet,” Lillie said.

  When Madison had gone, Lillie looked at Sajelle. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Sajelle, but why don’t you want to go to school here? Jessica’s just being an asshole, but not you.”

  “Just don’t want to.”

  “You went at Andrews.”

  “That different.”

  “How?”

  “Just was.”

  Lillie knew she was pushing, but something told her Sajelle did want to talk. Sajelle just didn’t want to look like she was willing.

  “What classes were you in at Andrews? We didn’t have any together.”

  “‘Course not!” Sajelle said with sudden energy.

  “What do you mean? If you want to talk, I don’t blab.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Then what did you mean, of course we didn’t have any classes together?”

  “Didn’t have classes with nobody. They give me a private tutor.” Sajelle stared at the grass.

  Suddenly Lillie saw it. She said gently, “It’s your old school, isn’t it? It was probably … not too strong academically. So you’re a little bit behind.”

  Sajelle looked up. Lillie was startled by the despair in her brown eyes. “Not that. Derek, he go to school in Harlem and he keep up with the rest of you. It be me.”

  “What?” Lillie said quietly.

  “Something in my brain. I can’t hardly even read!”

  Dyslexia. Karen, her old best friend Jenny’s little sister, had it. Jenny—why didn’t Lillie ever think about Jenny any more?

  “The tutor help me a lot,” Sajelle said, calmer now. “It start to make sense. But this Pam and Pete … they aliens. They can’t help me. And I going to look like an ass in front of everybody.”

  “They’re not really aliens,” Lillie said, because she couldn’t think what else to say. “They’re as human as we are, only more advanced. Maybe you could talk to them about this.”

  Sajelle snorted. “Would you?”

  “No,” Lillie had to admit.

  Sajelle looked at her. “You honest, Lillie. And you nice. But you not the one going to look stupid tomorrow in front of that bitch Jessica.”

  “Actually, we’re probably all going to look stupid next to Rafe and Emily. They’re really brains.”

  “Huh,” Sajelle snorted. She got to her feet and gazed toward the basketball court. Jessica had joined the game.

  “She talk about me getting it on. Look at her… she going after that sorry ass Sam. That ‘ho ain’t going to be sleeping alone. Well, she do what she want. Me, too, and I ain’t going to no school.”

  Sajelle walked off across the grass. Lillie lay back down again, troubled. What would Pam or Pete do if Sajelle and Jessica, or anybody else, just refused to go to the school room? Would they force them? How?

  She thought about this for a while, then raised herself on her elbow to watch the basketball. Jessica was going after Sam. Bonnie played like the boys, but Jessica was wrecking the game by “accidentally” falling against Sam and wiggling. Ugh. Why would anybody, even Jessica, want Sam?

  And would they really have sex?

  God, Jessica was only thirteen, same as Lillie. Lillie had let a boy kiss her once, and at dances they sort of pressed up against each other, but that was all. Did that make her backward? How many of these other girls were virgins?

  Well, Elizabeth for sure, she thought, and cheered up. Imagine Elizabeth … No, don’t. Julie, too, she was too shy to do anything. Madison? Probably. Sex would mess up her hair.

  Grinning, Lillie stood up, brushed the sweet-smelling grass off her jeans, and went to join a group of girls inspecting the flower beds.


  The next morning, after a breakfast as delicious as dinner the night before, Lillie headed for the school room. She had slept amazingly well, without dreams. Nobody had talked much at breakfast. Nervous, maybe. Lillie was.

  She was the second one in the school room. Elizabeth had beaten her there and now sat hunched at the table in the farthest corner. Suddenly Lillie felt sorry for Elizabeth. Everybody harassed her. Well, she was such a dork … but even so. It must hurt. She walked over and sat down next to Elizabeth.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth.”

  “Good morning,” she said, sounding startled.

  “I wonder what these ‘lessons’ will be like, don’t you?”

  Behind her thick glasses Elizabeth’s eyes darkened. “If they’re about genetics, they’re tampering with God’s plan.”

  Lillie should have sat someplace else. “Elizabeth, if you feel that way, why on Earth did you come? Why didn’t you stay back at Quantico?”

  Elizabeth set her bottom lip stubbornly. “I didn’t ask to be made this way. It wasn’t my choice. Now God wants me to do everything I can to undo the violation done to me.”

  “Undo it? How?”

  “That’s what I have to learn. God wants me to do this.” She really was crazy, Lillie decided. Lillie rose. “Well, nice talking to you.”

  “You’re here for the same reason,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve watched you.”

  “What?”

  “You sometimes look … you’re no more like these others than I am. You want something more than this world. I watch your face sometimes when they’re talking about sex or basketball or some superficial thing like that, and I see the longing for more. You’re like me.”

  “Not in a million years,” Lillie said, and stalked off. God, she shouldn’t let Elizabeth get to her like that. The girl was nuts.

  It scared her that Elizabeth had seen that about her.

  Madison and Emily came in together. “Lillie!” Madison called. “Sit with us!”

  Each of the six tables had four chairs. Lillie sat down gratefully. She didn’t know Emily very well, but she knew Emily was the smartest girl here. Emily went to a private school as a scholarship student. At Andrews she’d already been taking high school biology and advanced English. Trust Madison to glue herself to a ready-made tutor. Emily, quiet and generous, would help anyone who asked. She was a slight, pale girl with a short bob so blond it was nearly white. Lillie smiled at her. Why should Madison get all the help?

  Slowly, following a group of the boys, Sajelle came into the room.

  Lillie jumped up. “Sajelle! Sit here!”

  Madison complained, “I was saving that seat for Rebecca.”

  “Well, now you’re not. Rebecca can sit someplace else.”

  Sajelle sat down, frowning, chin raised. Lillie nodded at her encouragingly. From the next table Sam said, “Before Petey and Pammy start asking questions, I got some questions I want to ask them.”

  “Me, too,” Rafe said, more quietly.

  Pete and Pam entered from another door and stood at the front of the class, smiling. “Good morning. We found from TV broadcasts that this is how you educate your young, so we’re going to proceed this way. I hope it’s all right.”

  Sam said, less stridently than before the pribir had entered, “We want to ask some questions. Is that all right?”

  Pam beamed at them. “Yes, of course!”

  “Why did you come to Earth?”

  Pam said, “We came to spread the right way. Earth is only one of many, many planets we will go to. Pribir ships are in space for thousands of your years.”

  There was a stunned silence. Thousands of years!

  Madison blurted, “Then how old are you?”

  Pete answered this time. “We two are only a few hundred years old, by your measure. As we told you last night, we were born for this visit, engineered for it. Once a person is born, certain things about their bodies are set forever. Other things, of course, are not. You will learn about that. But we will be mostly as we look now for all our lives.”

  “How long will that be?” Madison said.

  “Another several hundred years, probably.”

  Jason said, “Wait a minute. You live hundreds of years and the whole point of your life is this visit to Earth? Of your whole life?”

  Pete said, “What’s the point of yours?”

  Jason looked puzzled. No one answered. They didn’t think, Lillie knew, about the point of their lives. Only weirdos like her did that. And Elizabeth. Most kids just lived lives. Maybe most adults did, too.

  Pam said, “Our purpose is a great one. Although, we admit, we did expect there to be more of you. Seventy-two were engineered.”

  What had Tara looked like?

  “But we can succeed anyway,” Pam went on. “The numbers will grow over time.”

  “The numbers of what?” Jessica called.

  Pam smiled. “I’m getting ahead of myself. We need to start at the beginning. Let’s take a simple gene, one you already worked with on the planet. You know one protein it can code for. Who can name another one?”

  An image formed in Lillie’s mind: one of the drawings she had made at Andrews and passed on to one of the constant parade of adults interviewing her. This drawing, like most of them, was a series of meaningless symbols, circles and squares and triangles and short straight lines, repeated in various sequences for anywhere from a hundred to several thousand pairs. The only thing it meant to her was that Pete and Pam could smell images to her just as well aboard the Flyer as they could on Earth, which was hardly surprising.

  Pam said encouragingly, “What else can this gene encode for besides that protein?”

  Lillie looked at Emily, who seemed as clueless as Lillie was.

  Pam stopped smiling. “Why aren’t you answering?”

  Rafe said, “We don’t know the answer.”

  Pete said, “What do you mean? We don’t understand.”

  Jason said, “We don’t know! How would we know? We just passed on to doctors the stuff you smelled to us.”

  Pete and Pam looked at each other. When they weren’t talking to the kids, their faces went completely blank. They were smelling to each other, Lillie suddenly realized, in some way the kids couldn’t detect. Some genetic receiver they hadn’t been engineered to have. Like a secret code.

  Pete said, “We know you can’t perform the genetic alterations we sent you, of course. Trained people must do that. But surely you understood the information? It’s pretty simple.”

  “Simple my ass,” Jessica said.

  “What do you think we are?” Sam said.

  Sophie stood. “I don’t need this shit.” She started toward the door.

  A babble of voices broke out, arguing with each other. Rebecca grabbed at Sophie’s hand to stop her from leaving, and Sophie pulled away angrily. Voices rose higher. Lillie stood and shouted over the din.

  “Pam, Pete, you just need to start back farther! So we can understand!”

  Mike stood, too. “Lillie’s right. Shut up everybody. It’s just a misunderstanding.”

  Slowly everyone quieted. Mike, sensible and low-key, addressed the pribir. “You learned a lot from our TV broadcasts or you couldn’t act and talk so human, but—”

  “We are human,” Pam said, with a tiny spark of something that might have been anger, the first Lillie had seen from either of them.

  “If you say so,” Mike said. “But the point is that the TV shows don’t really tell what kids our age know or don’t know. So you guessed. But we don’t know as much as you think. You need to start teaching us — ” He hesitated, glanced at Sam “—pretty basic stuff. Like, what a gene is. And a chromosome. And … what was that thing you said yesterday, Emily?”

  Emily, all attention suddenly on her, blushed. “A codon. Or whatever you pri … whatever Pam and Pete call a group of three base pairs that codes for an amino acid.”

  Pam and Pete looked as confused as the kids, and Lillie sudd
enly saw the problem. TV shows were usually about murders or love affairs or dumb families or sexy dancers. Stuff like genetic information was all over the Net, but it wasn’t broadcasted into space. Pam and Pete didn’t even have the words Emily was using, not only “codon” (what was a codon?) but even “amino acid,” which Lillie had heard of. Vaguely.

  However, the pribir caught on quickly. “Yes,” Pam said, with one of her smiles that Lillie suddenly realized was also copied from TV shows. “I see. Okay, we’ll start with … with this.”

  Lillie smelled another image: a double spiraling staircase with weirdly crooked outsides.

  “Big deal,” Jessica said. “What the hell is that?”

  Pam and Pete looked surprised. Well, Lillie thought, that isn’t a facial expression they learned from TV and practiced carefully. The surprise looked totally genuine. Maybe some expressions were the same even for hundreds-year-old humans from another star.

  Rafe said impatiently, “It’s a double helix, dummy. DNA.”

  “You call me ‘dummy’ again and I’ll beat you to mush,” Jessica said. No one doubted she could do it.

  Lillie and Mike were still standing, although Sophie had sat down again. Mike said calmly, “Look. There’s a way to do this. Emily and Rafe, you know this stuff already. The basics, anyway. You go up there with Pam and Pete and when they smell us something, you explain in our words what it is.”

  Emily shook her head, red-faced. Rafe said, “Okay,” and bounded to the front of the room. Madison shoved Emily until Emily joined him.

  “This is good,” Pam said, beaming again. “We’ll learn your words for concepts. And we can provide the materials.”

  The tabletops opened. No, not “opened” … they sort of dissolved. Inside was a bunch of stuff Lillie couldn’t identify. Black boxes, thin weird-shaped jars, pieces of what looked like equipment.

  “Lab time,” Hannah said.

  “Yes,” Pete agreed. “You will alter a bacteria today.”

  Jon blurted, “We’re going to do genetic engineering?”

  “Yes, of course,” Pete said, surprised again.

  “Bonus!” Jason said. “Can I engineer a porno goddess?”