Tam said, “And meanwhile, the civilized types like you graciously go around to the poor country villages that feed you and bless them with your important skills.”
Sutter looked at him across the fire. “That’s right, Tam.”
Uncle Seddie said, “Enough arguing. Go to bed, everybody.”
Seddie was the ranking elder; there was no choice but to obey. Tam pulled Juli up with him, and in their bedroll he copulated with her so hard that she had to tell him to be more gentle, he was hurting her.
They reached the egg, by the direct route Tam had mapped out, in less than a week. Another family already camped beside it.
The two approached each other warily, guns and precious ammunition prominently displayed. But the other family, the Janeways, turned out to be a lot like the Wilkinsons, a goat-and-farm clan whose herdsmen had discovered the egg and brought others back to see the God-given miracle.
Tam, standing behind Seddie and Ned, said, “There’s some that don’t think it is from God.”
The ranking Janeway, a tough old woman lean as Gran had been, said sharply, “Where else could it come from, way out here? No city tech left this here.”
“That’s what we say,” Seddie answered. He lowered his rifle. “You people willing to trade provisions? We got maple syrup, corn mush, some good pepper.”
“Pepper?” The old woman’s eyes brightened. “You got pepper?”
“We trade with a family that trades in St. Paul,” Ned said proudly. “Twice a year, spring and fall.”
“We got sugar and an extra radio.”
Tam’s chin jerked up. A radio! But that was worth more than any amount of provisions. Nobody would casually trade a radio.
“Our family runs to boys, nearly all boys,” the old woman said, by way of explanation. She looked past Tam, at Juli and Calie and Suze and Nan, hanging back with the mule and backpacks. “They’re having trouble finding fertile wives. If any of your girls … and if the young people liked each other …”
“Juli, the blond, she’s married to Tam here,” Seddie said. “And the other girls, they aren’t fertile … yet.”
“‘Yet?’ What do you mean, ‘yet’?”
Seddie pointed with his rifle at the egg. “Don’t you know what that is?”
“A gift from God,” the woman said.
“Yes. But don’t you know about the princess and her twins? Tell her, Tam.”
Tam told the story, feeling himself thrill to it as he did so. The woman listened intently, then squinted again at the girls. Seddie said quickly, “Nan is loose-brained, I have to tell you. And Suze is riding because her foot is crippled, although she’s got the sweetest, meekest nature you could ever find. But Calie there, even though she’s got a withered arm, is quick and smart and can do almost anything. And after she touches the egg … . but, ma’am, Wilkinsons don’t force marriages on our women. Never. Calie’d have to like one of your sons, and want to go with you.”
“O, we can see what happens,” the woman said, and winked, and for a second Tam saw what she must have been once, long ago, on a sweet summer night like this one when she was young.
He said suddenly, “The girls have to touch the egg at dawn.”
Seddie and Ned turned to him. “Dawn? Why dawn?”
Tam didn’t know why he’d said that, but now he had to see it through. “I don’t know. God just made that idea come to me.”
Seddie said to Mrs. Janeway, “Tam’s our smartest person. Always has been.”
“All right, then. Dawn.”
In the chill morning light, the girls lined up, shivering. Mrs. Janeway, Dr. Sutter, and the men from both families made an awkward semi-circle around them, shuffling their feet a little, not looking at each other. The five Janeway boys, a tangle of uncles and cousins, all looked a bit stooped, but they could all walk, and none were loose-brained. Tam had spent the previous evening at the communal campfire, saying little, watching and listening to see which Janeways might be good to his sisters. He’d already decided that Cal had a temper, and if he asked Uncle Seddie for Calie or Suze, Tam would advise against it.
Dr. Sutter had said nothing at the campfire, listening to the others become more and more excited about the egg-touching, about the fertility from God. Even when Mrs. Janeway had asked him questions, his replies had been short and evasive. She’d kept watching him, clearly suspicious. Tam had liked her more and more as the long evening progressed.
Followed by a longer night. Tam and Juli had argued.
“I want to touch it, too, Tam.”
“No. You have your certificate from that doctor two years ago. She tested you, and you’re already fertile.”
“Then why haven’t I started no baby? Maybe the fertility went away.”
“It doesn’t do that.”
“How do you know? I asked Dr. Sutter and he said—”
“You told Dr. Sutter about your body?” Rage swamped Tam.
Juli’s voice grew smaller. “O, he is a doctor! Tam, he says it’s hard to be sure about fertility testing for women, the test is … is some word I don’t remember. But he says about one certificate in four is wrong. He says we should do away with the certificates. He says—”
“I don’t care what he says!” Tam had all but shouted. “I don’t want you talking to him again! If I see you are, Juli, I’ll take it up with Uncle Seddie. And you are not touching the egg!”
Juli had raised herself on one elbow to stare at him in the starlight, then had turned her back and pretended to sleep until dawn.
Now she led Nan, the oldest sister, toward the egg. Nan crooned, drooling a little, and smiled at Juli. Juli was always tender with Nan. She smiled back, wiped Nan’s chin, and guided her hand toward the silvery oval. Tam watched carefully to see that Juli didn’t touch the egg herself. She didn’t, and neither did Nan, technically, since her hand stopped at whatever unseen wall protected the object. But everyone let out a sharp breath, and Nan laughed suddenly, one of her clear high giggles, and Tam felt suddenly happier.
Seddie said, “Now Suze.”
Juli led Nan away. Suze, carried by Uncle Ned, reached out and touched the egg. She, too, laughed aloud, her sweet face alight, and Tam saw Vic Janeway lean forward a little, watching her. Suze couldn’t plow or plant, but she was the best cook in the family if everything were put in arm’s reach. And she could sew and weave and read and carve.
Next Calie, pretty if Juli hadn’t been there for comparison, and the other four Janeway men watched. Calie’s one hand, dirt under the small fingernails, stayed on the egg a long time, trembling.
No one spoke.
“O, then,” Mrs. Janeway said, “we should pray.”
They did, each family waiting courteously while the other said their special prayers, all joining in the “Our Father.” Tam caught Sutter looking at him somberly, and he glared back. Nothing Sutter’s “medicine” had ever done had helped Tam’s sisters, and anyway, it was none of Sutter’s business what the Wilkinsons and Janeways did. Let him go back to St. Paul with his heathen beliefs.
“I want to touch the egg,” Juli said. “I won’t get no other chance. We leave in the morning.”
Tam had had no idea that she could be so stubborn. She’d argued and pleaded for the three days they’d camped with the Janeways, letting the families get to know each other. Now they were leaving in the morning, with Vic and Lenny Janeway traveling with them to stay until the end of harvest, so Suze and Calie could decide about marriage. And Juli was still arguing!
“I said no,” Tam said tightly. He was afraid to say more—afraid not of her, but of himself. Some men beat their wives; not Wilkinson men. But watching Juli all evening, Tam had suddenly understood those other men. She had deliberately sat talking only to Dr. Sutter, smiling at him in the flickering firelight. Even Uncle Ned had noticed, Tam thought, and that made Tam writhe with shame. He had dragged Juli off to bed early, and here she was arguing still, while singing started around the fire twenty feet away.
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br /> “Tam … please! I want to start a baby, and nothing we do started one … . Don’t get upset, but … but Dr. Sutter says sometimes the man is infertile, even though it don’t happen as often as women’s wombs it can still happen, and maybe—”
It was too much. First his wife shames him by spending the evening sitting close to another man, talking and laughing, and then she suggests that him, not her, might be the reason there was no baby yet. Him! When God had clearly closed the wombs of women after the Collapse, just like he did to those sinning women in the Bible! Anger and shame thrilled through Tam, and before he knew he was going to do it, he hit her.
It was only a slap. Juli put her hand to her cheek, and Tam suddenly would have given everything he possessed to take the slap back. Juli jumped up and ran off in the darkness, away from the fire. Tam let her go. She had a right to be upset now, he’d given her that. He lay stiffly in the darkness, intending every second to go get her—there were wolves out there, after all, although they seldom attacked people. Still, he would go get her. But he didn’t, and, without knowing it, he fell asleep.
When he woke, it was near dawn. Juli woke him, creeping back into their bedroll.
“Juli! You … it’s nearly dawn. Where were you all this time?”
She didn’t answer. In the icy pale light, her face was flushed.
He said slowly, “You touched it.”
She wriggled the rest of the way into the bedroll and turned her back to him. Over her shoulder she said, “No, Tam. I didn’t touch it.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No. I didn’t touch it,” she repeated, and Tam believed her. So he had won. Generosity filled him.
“Juh—I’m sorry I hit you. So sorry.”
Abruptly she twisted in the bedroll to face him. “I know. Tam, listen to me … . God wants me to start a baby. He does!”
“Yes, of course,” Tam said, bewildered by her sudden ferocity.
“He wants me to start a baby!”
“Are you … are you saying that you have?”
She was silent a long time. Then she said, “Yes. I think so.”
Joy filled him. He took her in his arms, and she let him. It would all be right, now. He and Juli would have a child, many children. So would Suze and Calie, and—who could say?—maybe even Nan. The egg’s fame would grow, and there would be many babies again.
On the journey home, Juli stuck close to Tam, never looking even once in Dr. Sutter’s direction. He avoided her, too. Tam gloated; so much for science and tech from the cities! When they reached the farm, Dr. Sutter retrieved his dirtbike and rode away. The next time a doctor came to call, it was someone different.
Juli bore a girl, strong and whole except for two missing fingers. During her marriage to Tam, she bore four more children, finally dying while trying to deliver a sixth one. Suze and Calie married the Janeway boys, but neither conceived. After three years of trying, Lenny Janeway sent Calie back to the Wilkinsons; Calie never smiled or laughed much again.
For decades afterward, the egg was proclaimed a savior, a gift from God, a miracle to repopulate Minnesota. Families came and feasted and prayed, and the girls touched the egg, more each year. Most of the girls never started a baby, but a few did, and at times the base of the egg was almost invisible under the gifts of flowers, fruit, woven cloth, even a computer from St. Paul and a glass perfume bottle from much farther away, so delicate that the wind smashed it one night. Or bears did, or maybe even angels. Some people said that angels visited the egg regularly. They said that the angels even touched it, through the invisible wall.
Tam’s oldest daughter didn’t believe that. She didn’t believe much, Tam thought, for she was the great disappointment of his life. Strong, beautiful, smart, she got herself accepted to a merit school in St. Paul, and she went, despite her missing fingers. She made herself into a scientist and turned her back on the Bible. Tam, who had turned more stubborn as he grew old, refused to see her again. She said that the egg wasn’t a miracle and had never made anyone pregnant. She said there were no saviors for humanity but itself.
Tam, who had become not only more stubborn but also more angry after Juli died, turned his face away and refused to listen.
Transmission: There is nothing here yet.
Current probability of occurrence: 28%.
III: 2175
Abby4 said, “The meeting is in northern Minnesota? Why?”
Mal held onto his temper. He’d been warned about Abby4. One of the Biomensas, Mal’s network of friends and colleagues had said, In the top 2 percent of genemods. She likes to throw around her superiority. Don’t let her twist you. The contract is too important.
His friends had also said not to be intimidated by either Abby4’s office or her beauty. The office occupied the top floor of the tallest building in Raleigh, with a sweeping view of the newly cleaned-up city. A garden in the sky, its walls and ceiling were completely hidden by the latest genemod plants from AbbyWorks, flowers so exotic and brilliant that, just looking at them, a visitor could easily forget what he was going to say. Probably that was the idea.
Abby4’s beauty was even more distracting than her office. She sat across from him in a soft white chair that only emphasized her sleek, hard glossiness. The face of an Aztec princess, framed by copper hair pulled into a thick roll on either side. The sash of her black business suit stopped just above the swell of white breasts that Mal determinedly ignored. Her legs were longer than his dreams.
Mal said pleasantly, “The meeting is in northern Minnesota because the Chinese contact is already doing business in St. Paul, at the university. And he wants to see a curiosity near the old Canadian border, an object that government records show as an alien artifact.”
Abby4 blinked, probably before she knew that she was going to do it, which gave Mal enormous satisfaction. Not even the Biomensas, with their genetically engineered intelligence and memory, knew everything.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Abby4 said, and Mal was careful not to recognize the bluff. “O, then, northern Minnesota. Send my office system the details, please. Thank you, Mr. Goldstone.”
Mal rose to go. Abby4 did not rise. In the outer office, he passed a woman several years older than Abby4 but looking so much like her that it must be one of the earlier clones. The woman stooped slightly. Undoubtedly each successive clone had better genemods as the technology came onto the market. AbbyWorks was, after all, one of the five or six leading biosolutions companies in Raleigh, and that meant in the world.
Mal left the Eden-like AbbyWorks building to walk into the shrouding heat of a North Carolina summer. In the parking lot, his car wouldn’t start. Cursing, he opened the hood. Someone had broken the hood lock and stolen the engine.
Purveyors of biosolutions to the world, Mal thought bitterly, cleaners-up of the ecological, neurological, and population disasters of the Collapse, and we still can’t create a decent hood lock! O, that actually figured. For the last hundred and fifty years—no, closer to two hundred now—the best minds of each American generation had been concentrating on biology. Engineering, physics, and everything else got few practitioners, and even less funding.
O, it had paid off. Not only for people like Abby4, the beautiful Biomensa bitch, but even for comparative drones like Mal. He had biological defenses against lingering environmental pollutants (they would linger for another thousand years), he was fertile, he even had modest genemods so that he didn’t look like a troll or think like a troglodyte. What he didn’t have was a working car.
He took out his phone and called a cab.
August in Minnesota was not cold, but Kim Mao Xun, the Chinese client, was well wrapped in layers of silk and thin wool. He looked very old, which meant that he was probably even older. Obviously no genemods for appearance, Mal thought, whatever else Mr. Kim might have. O, they did things differently in China! When you survived the Collapse on nothing but sheer numbers, you started your long climb back with essentials, nothing else.
/>
“I am so excited to see the Alien Craft,” he said in excellent English. “It is famous in China, you know.”
Abby4 smiled. “Here, I’m afraid, it’s mostly a curiosity. Very few people even know it exists, although the government has authenticated from written records that it landed in October 2007, an event widely recorded by the best scientific instruments of the age.”
“So much better than what we have now,” Mr. Kim murmured, and Abby4 frowned.
“O, yes, I suppose … but then, they didn’t have a world to clean up, did they?”
“And we do. Mr. Goldstone tells me you can help us do this in Shanghai.”
“Yes, we can,” Abby4 said, and the meeting began to replicate in earnest.
Mal listened intently, taking notes, but said nothing. Meeting brokers didn’t get involved in details. Matching, arranging, follow-through, impartial evaluation, and, if necessary, arbitration. Then disappear until the next time. But Mal was interested; this was his biggest client so far.
And the biggest problem: Shanghai. The city and the harbor, which must add up to hundreds of different pollutants, each needing a different genetically designed organism to attack it. Plus, Shanghai had been viral-bombed during the war with Japan. Those viruses would be much mutated by now, especially if they had jumped hosts, which they probably had. Mal could see that even Abby4 was excited by the scope of the job, although she was trying to conceal it.
“What is Shanghai’s current population, Mr. Kim?”
“Zero.” Mr. Kim smiled wryly. “Officially, anyway. The city is quarantined. Of course, there are the usual stoopers and renegades, but we will do our best to relocate them before you begin, and those who will not go may be ignored by your operators.”
Something chilling in that. Although did the US do any better? Mal had heard stories—everyone had heard stories—of families who’d stayed in the most contaminated areas for generations, becoming increasingly deformed and increasingly frightening. There were even people still living in places like New York City, which had taken the triple blow of pollutants, bioweapons, and radiation. Theoretically, the population of New York City was zero. In reality, nobody would go in to count, nor even send in the doggerels, biosolutioned canines with magnitude-one immunity and selectively enhanced intelligence. A doggerel was too expensive to risk in New York. Whoever—or whatever—couldn’t be counted by robots (and American robots were so inadequate compared to the Asian product), stayed uncounted.
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection Page 20