The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “But you can use Robbie’s antibodies to maybe develop a vaccine?”

  He didn’t answer. She knew the second the words left her mouth how stupid they were. Rice might have antibodies, but he had no time. None of them had enough time.

  Yet they all worked on, as if they did. Because that’s what humans did.

  Instead of answering her question, he said, “I need more samples, Marianne.”

  “Yes.”

  Fifteen minutes later he entered her slammer, dressed in full space suit and sounding as if speaking through a vacuum cleaner. “Blood samples plus a tissue biopsy, just lie back down and hold still, please…”

  During a previous visit, he had told her of an old joke among immunologists working with lethal diseases: “The first person to isolate a virus in the lab by getting infected is a hero. The second is a fool.” Well, that made Marianne a fool. So be it.

  She said to Rice, “And the aliens haven’t … Ow!”

  “Baby.” He withdrew the biopsy needle and slapped a bandage over the site.

  She tried again. “And the aliens haven’t commented at all on Robbie’s diagnosis? Not a word?”

  “Not a word.”

  Marianne frowned. “Something isn’t right here.”

  “No,” Rice said, bagging his samples, “it certainly is not.”

  NOAH

  Nothing, Noah thought, had ever felt more right, not in his entire life.

  He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Llaa^moh¡. She still slept, her naked body and long legs tangled in the light blanket made of some substance he could not name. Her wiry dark hair smelled of something like cinnamon, although it probably wasn’t. The blanket smelled of sex.

  He knew now why he had not felt the same shock of recognition at their first meeting that he had felt with Mee^hao¡ and the unnamed New York nurse and surly young Tony Schrupp. After the World geneticists had done their work, Mee^hao¡ had explained it to him. Noah felt profound relief. He and Llaa^moh¡ shared a mitochondrial DNA group, but not a nuclear DNA one. They were not too genetically close to mate.

  Of course, they could have had sex anyway; World had early, and without cultural shame or religious prejudice, discovered birth control. But for the first time in his life, Noah did not want just sex. He wanted to mate.

  The miracle was that she did, too. Initially he feared that for her it was mere novelty: be the first Worlder to sleep with a Terran! But it was not. Just yesterday they had signed a five-year mating contract, followed by a lovely ceremony in the garden to which every single Worlder had come. Noah had never known exactly how many were aboard the Embassy; now he did. They had all danced with him, every single one, and also with her. Mee^hao¡ himself had pierced their right ears and hung from them the wedding silver, shaped like stylized versions of the small flowers that had once, very long ago, been the real thing.

  “Is better,” Noah had said in his accented, still clumsy World. “We want not bunch of dead vegetation dangle from our ears.” At least, that’s what he hoped he’d said. Everyone had laughed.

  Noah reached out one finger to stroke Llaa^moh¡’s hair. A miracle, yes. A whole skyful of miracles, but none as much as this: Now he knew who he was and where he belonged and what he was going to do with his life.

  His only regret was that his mother had not been at the mating ceremony. And—yes, forgiveness was in order here!—Elizabeth and Ryan, too. They had disparaged him his entire life and he would never see them again, but they were still his first family. Just not the one that any longer mattered.

  Llaa^moh¡ stirred, woke, and reached for him.

  MARIANNE

  Robbie Chavez, recovered from Respirovirus sporii, gave so many blood and tissue samples that he joked he’d lost ten pounds without dieting. It wasn’t much of a joke, but everyone laughed. Some of the laughter held hysteria.

  Twenty-two people left aboard the Embassy. Why, Marianne sometimes wondered, had these twenty-two chosen to stay and work until the last possible second? Because the odds of finding anything that would affect the coming die-off were very low. They all knew that. Yet here they were, knowing they would die in this fantastically equipped, cut-off-from-the-world lab instead of with their families. Didn’t any of them have families? Why were they still here?

  Why was she?

  No one discussed this. They discussed only work, which went on eighteen hours a day. Brief breaks for microwaved meals from the freezer. Briefer—not in actuality, but that’s how it felt—for sleep.

  The four people exposed to R. sporii worked outside the slammers; maintaining biosafety no longer seemed important. No one else became ill. Marianne relearned lab procedures she had not performed since grad school. Theoretical evolutionary biologists did not work as immunologists. She did now.

  Every day, the team sent samples of data to the Denebs. Every day, the Denebs gave thanks, and nothing else.

  In July, eight-and-a-half months after they’d first been given the spores to work with, the scientists finally succeeded in growing the virus in a culture. There was a celebration of sorts. Harrison Rice produced a hoarded bottle of champagne.

  “We’ll be too drunk to work,” Marianne joked. She’d come to admire Harrison’s unflagging cheerfulness.

  “On one twenty-second of one bottle?” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, maybe not everyone drinks.”

  Almost no one did. Marianne, Harrison, and Robbie Chavez drank the bottle. Culturing the virus, which should have been a victory, seemed to turn the irritable more irritable, the dour more dour. The tiny triumph underlined how little they had actually achieved. People began to turn strange. The unrelenting work, broken sleep, and constant tension created neuroses.

  Penny Hodgson turned compulsive about the autoclave: It must be loaded just so, in just this order, and only odd numbers of tubes could be placed in the rack at one time. She flew into a rage when she discovered eight tubes, or twelve.

  William Parker, Nobel Laureate in medicine, began to hum as he worked. Eighteen hours a day of humming. If told to stop, he did, and then unknowingly resumed a few minutes later. He could not carry a tune, and he liked lugubrious country and western tunes.

  Marianne began to notice feet. Every few seconds, she glanced at the feet of others in the lab, checking that they still had them. Harrison’s work boots, as if he tramped the forests of Hudson’s Bay. Mark Wu’s black oxfords. Penny’s Nikes—did she think she’d be going for a run? Robbie’s sandals. Ann’s—

  Stop it, Marianne!

  She couldn’t.

  They stopped sending samples and data to the Denebs and held their collective breath, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did.

  Workboots, Oxfords, Nikes, sandals—

  “I think,” Harrison said, “that I’ve found something.”

  It was an unfamiliar protein in Marianne’s blood. Did it have anything to do with the virus? They didn’t know. Feverishly they set to work culturing it, sequencing it, photographing it, looking forward in everyone else. The protein was all they had.

  It was August.

  The outside world, with which they had no contact, had ceased to exist for them, even as they raced to save it.

  Workboots—

  Oxfords—

  Sandals—

  NOAH

  Rain fell in the garden. Noah tilted his head to the artificial sky. He loved rainy afternoons, even if this was not really rain, nor afternoon. Soon he would experience the real thing.

  Llaa^moh¡ came toward him through the dark, lush leaves open as welcoming hands. Noah was surprised; these important days she rarely left the lab. Too much to do.

  She said, “Should not you be teaching?”

  He wanted to say I’m playing hooky but had no idea what the idiom would be in Worldese. Instead he said, hoping he had the tenses right, “My students I will return at soon. Why you here? Something is wrong?”

  “All is right.” She moved into his
arms. Again Noah was surprised; Worlders did not touch sexually in public places, even public places temporarily empty. Others might come by, unmated others, and it was just as rude to display physical affection in front of those without it as to eat in front of anyone hungry.

  “Llaa^moh¡—”

  She whispered into his ear. Her words blended with the rain, with the rich flower scents, with the odor of wet dirt. Noah clutched her and began to cry.

  VI: S MINUS TWO WEEKS

  MARIANNE

  The Commons outside the lab was littered with frozen food trays, with discarded sterile wrappings, with an empty disinfectant bottle. Harrison slumped in a chair and said the obvious.

  “We’ve failed, Marianne.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.” And then, fiercely, “Do you think the Denebs know more than we do? And aren’t sharing?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Fucking bastards,” Marianne said. Weeks ago she had crossed the line from defending the aliens to blaming them. How much of humanity had been ahead of her in that? By now, maybe all of it.

  They had discovered nothing useful about the anomalous protein in Marianne’s blood. The human body contained so many proteins whose identities were not understood. But that wouldn’t make any difference, not now. There wasn’t enough time.

  “Harrison,” she began, and didn’t get to finish her sentence.

  Between one breath and the next, Harrison Rice and the lab, along with everything else, disappeared.

  NOAH

  Nine, not counting him. The rest had been put ashore, to face whatever would happen to them on Earth. Noah would have much preferred to be with Llaa^moh¡, but she of course had duties. Even unannounced, departure was dangerous. Too many countries had too many formidable weapons.

  So instead of standing beside Llaa^moh¡, Noah sat in his energy suit in the Terran compartment of the shuttle. Around him, strapped into chairs, sat the nine Terrans going to World. The straps were unnecessary; Llaa^moh¡ had told him that the acceleration would feel mild, due to the same gravity-altering machinery that had made the World section of the Embassy so comfortable. But Terrans were used to straps in moving vehicles, so there were straps.

  Kayla Rhinehart and her little son.

  Her sister, Isabelle.

  The surly Tony Schrupp, a surprise. Noah had been sure Tony would change his mind.

  A young woman, five months pregnant, who “wanted to give my baby a better life.” She did not say what her previous life had been, but there were bruises on her arms and legs.

  A pair of thirty-something brothers with restless, eager-for-adventure eyes.

  A middle-aged journalist with a sun-leathered face and an impressive byline, recorders in her extensive luggage.

  And, most unexpected, a Terran physicist, Dr. Nathan Beyon of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Nine Terrans willing to go to the stars.

  A slight jolt. Noah smiled at the people under his leadership—he, who had never led anything before, not even his own life—and said, “Here we go.”

  That seemed inadequate, so he said, “We are off to the stars!”

  That seemed dumb. Tony sneered. The journalist looked amused. Austin clutched his mother.

  Noah said, “Your new life will be wonderful. Believe it.”

  Kayla gave him a wobbly smile.

  MARIANNE

  She could not imagine where she was.

  Cool darkness, with the sky above her brightening every second. It had been so long since she’d seen a dawn sky, or any sky. Silver-gray, then pearl, and now the first flush of pink. The floor rocked gently. Then the last of the knock-out gas left her brain and she sat up. A kind of glorified barge, flat and wide with a single square rod jutting from the middle. The barge floated gently on New York Harbor. The sea was smooth as polished gray wood. In one direction rose the skyline of Manhattan; in the other, the Embassy. All around her lay her colleagues: Dr. Rafat, Harrison Rice and Ann Potter, lab techs Penny and Robbie, all the rest of the twenty-two people who’d still been aboard the Embassy. They wore their daily clothing. In her jeans and tee, Marianne shivered in a sudden breeze.

  Nearby lay a pile of blankets. She took a yellow one and wrapped it around her shoulders. It felt warm and silky, although clearly not made of silk. Other people began to stir. Pink tinged the east.

  Harrison came to her side. “Marianne?”

  Automatically she said, because she’d been saying it so many times each day, “I feel fine.” And then, “What the fuck?”

  He said something just as pointless: “But we have two more weeks!”

  “Oh my God!” someone cried, pointing, and Marianne looked up. The eastern horizon turned gold. Against it, a ship, dark and small, shot from the Embassy and climbed the sky. Higher and higher, while everyone on the barge shaded their eyes against the rising sun and watched it fly out of sight.

  “They’re going,” someone said quietly.

  They. The Denebs. Noah.

  Before the tears that stung her eyes could fall, the Embassy vanished. One moment it was there, huge and solid and gray in the pre-dawn, and the next it was just gone. The water didn’t even ripple.

  The metal rod in the center of the ship spoke. Marianne, along with everyone else, turned sharply. Shoulder-high, three feet on a side, the rod had become four screens, each filled with the same alien/human image and mechanical voice.

  “This is Ambassador Smith. A short time from now, this recording will go to everyone on Earth, but we wanted you, who have helped us so much, to hear it first. We of World are deeply in your debt. I would like to explain why, and to leave you a gift.

  “Your astronomers’ calculations were very slightly mistaken, and we did not correct them. In a few hours the spore cloud will envelop your planet. We do not think it will harm you because—”

  Someone in the crowd around the screen cried, “What?”

  “—because you are genetically immune to this virus. We suspected as much before we arrived, although we could not be sure. Homo sapiens acquired immunity when Earth passed through the cloud the first time, about seventy thousand years ago.”

  A graphic replaced Smith’s face: the Milky Way galaxy, a long dark splotch overlapping it, and a glowing blue dot for Earth. “The rotation of the galaxy plus its movement through space-time will bring you back into contact with the cloud’s opposite edge from where it touched you before. Your physicists were able to see the approaching cloud, but your instruments were not advanced enough to understand its shape or depth. Earth will be passing through the edge of the cloud for two-point-six years. On its first contact, the cloud killed every homo sapiens that did not come with this genetic mutation.”

  A gene sequence of base pairs flashed across the screen, too fast to be noted.

  “This sequence will appear again later, in a form you can record. It is found in what you call ‘junk DNA.’ The sequence is a transposon and you will find it complementary to the spores’ genetic code. Your bodies made no antibodies against the spores because it does not consider them invaders. Seventy thousand years ago our people had already been taken from Earth or we, too, would have died. We are without this sequence, which appeared in mutation later than our removal.”

  Marianne’s mind raced. Seventy thousand years ago. The “bottleneck event” that had shrunk the human population on Earth to a mere few thousand. It had not been caused by the Toba volcano or ferocious predators or climate changes, but by the spore cloud. As for the gene sequence—one theory said that much of the human genome consisted of inactive and fossilized viruses absorbed into the DNA. Fossilized and inactive—she could almost hear Evan’s voice: “Or so we thought.…”

  Smith continued. “You will find that in Marianne Jenner, Ahmed Rafat, and Penelope Hodgson this sequence has already activated, producing the protein already identified in Dr. Jenner’s blood, a protein that this recording will detail for you. The protein attaches to the outside of cells and pr
events the virus from entering. Soon the genetic sequence will do so in the rest of humanity. Some may become mildly ill, like Robert Chavez, due to faulty protein production. We estimate this will comprise perhaps twenty percent of you. There may be fatalities among the old or already sick, but most of you are genetically protected. Some of your rodents do not seem to be, which we admit was a great surprise to us, and we cannot say for certain what other Terran species may be susceptible.

  “We know that we are fatally susceptible. We cannot alter our own genome, at least not for the living, but we have learned much from you. By the time the spore cloud reaches World, we will have developed a vaccine. This would not have been possible without your full cooperation and your bodily samples. We—”

  “If this is true,” Penny Hodgson shouted, “why didn’t they tell us?”

  “—did not tell you the complete truth because we believe that had you known Earth was in no critical danger, you would not have allocated so many resources, so much scientific talent, or such urgency into the work on the Embassy. We are all human, but your evolutionary history and present culture are very different from ours. You do not build identity on family. You permit much of Earth’s population to suffer from lack of food, water, and medical care. We didn’t think you would help us as much as we needed unless we withheld from you certain truths. If we were mistaken in our assessment, please forgive us.”

  They weren’t mistaken, Marianne thought.

  “We are grateful for your help,” Smith said, “even if obtained fraudulently. We leave you a gift in return. This recording contains what you call the ‘engineering specs’ for a star drive. We have already given you the equations describing the principles. Now you may build a ship. In generations to come, both branches of humanity will profit from more open and truthful exchanges. We will become true brothers.