by Nancy Kress
Judy and Marianne sat in the mess hall at midnight, the only ones there. The scientists, engineers, and workmen at the Venture site went to bed early, woke up early, worked long hours. Benjamin Franklin would have been proud of them. A bottle of scotch rested on the table between the women, and a salad plate overflowed with Judy’s cigarette butts.
Judy said, “We should have anticipated this. The Russians sold Scuds to every third-world country they could.”
Marianne said, “We’re not a third-world country.”
Judy gazed around the cinder-block mess hall, with its cheap metal tables and chairs, its scattered computers with their monitoring systems to spy on anyone who used them. “Are you sure about that?”
“Third-world countries can’t build anything like the Venture.”
“No. But then, the good old US of A isn’t building it, is she?” Judy sipped her coffee. “Jonah Stubbins is.”
Marianne didn’t answer.
Judy said, “Oh, Christ, here comes Ahab. Look, say you were smoking these, all right? I’m in enough trouble as is.” With a single fluid motion she was off the bench, across the room, and out the opposite door.
Stubbins didn’t seem to notice her departure. Nor did he comment on the cigarette butts. He stood in the doorway, gave a small lurch, and then stumbled toward Marianne. Plopping heavily onto the bench, he fumbled for Judy’s glass, knocked it over, and gestured toward the scotch.
He was, Marianne realized, toweringly, monumentally drunk.
“Gimme drink, sweetheart.”
Marianne didn’t want to be alone with Stubbins in this state. She smiled, pushed the scotch toward him—only a few fingers’ worth remained in the bottle—and said good night.
“Stay a minute. Damn Scuds—next time that could be my ship.”
The sudden pain on his face cut through his sloppy drunkenness like detergent through grease. Marianne suddenly realized this could be an opportunity to obtain information from Stubbins. In vino veritas. It had sometimes worked with Kyle, although the information she got from her alcoholic ex-husband never turned out to be anything she wanted to hear.
But before she could frame her first question, Stubbins said, “Sweetheart, you know why I’m so rich?”
“Don’t call me that, please. We are not sweethearts.”
He laughed, a loud bray. “No. But damn, I shoulda married somebody like you, not those bimbos I allus picked.”
“Belinda is hardly a bimbo.”
“No. She’s a shark. Bes’ negoti … negotit … bargainer I ever saw.”
Marianne could believe that. Belinda had bargained herself into reconstructive surgery and probably a big financial settlement. Marianne said, “About the Venture—”
“Too bad I can’t use Belinda on World,” Stubbins said. “Might need good bargainers. Swee—Marianne, know why Earth’s going to hell?”
There were several things she could have answered, but before she said anything, Stubbins was off. He held his glass—Judy’s glass, which he’d filled with the last of the scotch—so loosely that Marianne kept expecting it to fall from his huge hands and smash.
“World going to hell ’cause-a Darwin.”
She hadn’t expected that. “Darwin? Charles or Erasmus?”
“Don’ go cute-intellectual on me. Charles. Survi’al of the fittest. People don’ take responsibility for themselves, expect everybody else to do it for them. Unfit don’ deserve to survive.”
“So you’d murder, or murder by neglect, people born ‘unfit’ who might turn out to be Beethoven.”
“Beethoven—you liberals allus bring up Beethoven. Or Temple Grandin. No, thass not what I mean. Physically unfit is nothin’, tech makes that irrel … unrel … don’ matter. I mean unfit to take the risks and pay the price of movin’ forward. Capitalism, I mean. The pure thing. And bringin’ society along with you.”
“Far too often,” Marianne said, “the capitalist risk-takers have had other people pay the price. A risk to mine ore, but the miners get the cave-ins and black lung. A risk to finance a railroad, but Chinese laborers die laying the tracks through mountains and across deserts. A risk to finance nuclear power, but the officials and scientists don’t live anywhere near the reactors. A risk to—”
“Would you rather be without the ore and railroads and power?”
She was silent.
“You’re an honest woman,” Stubbins said, somehow managing to sound both more articulate but no less drunk. “Naïve but honest. So answer me honest. Would the country be better oof—I mean, better off without steel and railroads and airplanes and power grids? Would you wanna live in a country without ’em?”
“No,” she said reluctantly, “but—”
“No ‘buts.’”
“Jonah, that’s what people like you never see! There are always ‘buts’! Every issue is complex, shades of gray, not black and white.”
“Oh, I see that. I jus’ don’ get lost in gray.”
“But—”
“If human beings gonna survive, it’ll be because somebody took risks. Big risks. Your own speeches said that.”
“Yes, but I meant the risks of building the government spaceship, of going to World—”
“Which I’m doin’.”
“Yes, you are. But Jonah—what else are you doing? After we arrive? What risks are you going to take, and with whose lives?”
For a breathless moment she actually thought he was going to answer her. His face changed, going from the triumph of his supposed victory in their debate to an expression quieter, more somber. But all he said was, “That coulda been my ship blown up by those Scuds.”
She said, “Pure capitalism is one of the most exploitive and inhumane economic systems ever invented.”
He grinned. “Hobbled capitalism gets nothin’ done.”
“Depends on what you want to do.”
“Absolutely right,” he said. “And on somebody with the guts to do it.”
“Ivan the Terrible had guts.”
“But no vision.” Stubbins stared into the middle distance—at a vision only he could see? Or merely at the squinty illusions of someone too drunk to make sense?
Then he added, with one of the lightning changes that so bewildered her, “I give back, Marianne. I do good while makin’ profits. And ‘profit’ ain’t a dirty word.”
“I never said—”
“As good as said.” And then, as if mourning a lover, “Poor bastards. And that coulda been my ship. No way. Never let it happen.”
“Good night, Jonah.”
“My ship. No way.” He raised bloodshot eyes to hers. “Never.”
* * *
Colin’s dreams had gotten worse. Now he had three bad dreams: Daddy being more trapped underground than Brandon’s elephant. Paul killed by Colin’s tree branch. And now large purple monsters blowing up the Venture. If that happened, Colin would never get to ride on it. Jason said they probably wouldn’t get to ride on it anyway, but Colin didn’t believe him.
Daytime was a lot better, especially since Ava came. Jason was their leader because he was the oldest, but the other three could hear the ground and plants and everything. Colin didn’t have to teach Ava how to arrange the noises in rows. She was better at it than he was. She could hear more sounds, too, and she knew what more of them meant. Colin was jealous.
But Ava couldn’t read, not even the few words Luke knew. She was smart, she told the boys, but something was wrong with her brain. Letters and numbers just went “swimming” in front of her eyes and wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to make sense of them.
Colin pictured the alphabet with fins and goggles, swimming all over the page. He could see how that would make reading hard.
Ms. Blake tried. She guided Ava’s hand to draw letters in sand, so that Ava’s muscles would learn the letters even if her brain couldn’t. It didn’t help, and school had finished with Ava throwing sand at everybody and screaming bad words at Ms. Blake.
&nb
sp; On a clear, cool day the four children lay on a patch of weedy ground behind a building and a tiny woods. They were pretty near the inside fence, which had barbed wire on it but no electricity like the outside fence, where the guards walked. Colin, Luke, and Ava pressed their ears to the ground while Jason kept watch.
“Hear that sort of thump-thump-whistle-thump?” Ava said.
“Yeah,” Colin said. “That’s the biomass saying that something not-too-big is walking around.”
“Us,” Luke said proudly. A week and a half of comparing what they’d figured out about the plant signals going through the soil, and they all knew more than before. Even Luke, who had much less trouble remembering this than how much was six plus two.
“Duh,” Ava said. “What else?”
Colin said, “That tree over there wants water.”
“Duh again. Everybody knows that. You’re such a baby, Colin.”
“Am not!” Colin said. To prove it, he hit her.
“Stop that!” Ava screamed. “If you don’t, I’ll sneak into your room and dump gasoline on you and set you on fire, so help me Lord!”
Luke shuddered, but Jason just rolled his eyes. Colin was a little scared, but he said, “You can’t.”
“Yes, I can!”
“I’ll … I’ll make a tree fall on you!”
The three of them looked at him. Jason frowned—was he remembering the tree branch that fell on Paul? Colin said desperately, “I’m sorry, Ava. Look—I’ll … I’ll do those alphabet letters Ms. Blake told you to write for homework.”
“She’ll know it were you and not me, dummy.”
“I’ll write them all wobbly so she’ll think it was you.”
“And then when I cain’t write them in school she’ll know it warn’t me.”
Colin didn’t know what to say next. But Luke did. He said, “The sounds can teach Ava her letters.”
“What?” Jason said.
“That’s how I learned. It’s hard, but if you make lines when the sounds come … I can’t say the words.”
“Then show us,” Jason said. He jumped up and found a discarded stick, one of the many splinters of lumber lying all over the camp. He handed it to Luke, who took it helplessly.
Luke said, “Don’t look at me. I don’t like it when people look at me.”
“Okay,” Jason said. He looked at the dirt beneath the stick. Colin and Ava, arms folded scornfully across her chest, did the same.
“Well,” Luke said slowly. “Remember that whistle? From the tree past the fence?”
“Yeah,” Ava said, “it wants water. So what?”
“I think that sound in my mind and I make these lines because Ms. Feldman said that it starts ‘tree.’” Carefully, as if the two lines had no connection with each other, he drew a line and a top: T.
Ava said doubtfully, “But do those lines always start tree? Or do it change?”
“I think always.”
Colin felt a sudden jolt in his head, like his mind sat down too hard. Luke couldn’t sound out words, couldn’t see how letters spelled things. Luke only memorized lines which didn’t mean anything to him, because he’d made letters go in some sort of rows in his head, connected to sounds that weren’t the letters’ sounds. And Ava couldn’t even do that, unless Luke could teach her.
Luke did, with enormous patience. After half an hour, Ava could draw T, V, and A, and write her name. Good thing it was so short! But when Colin, wanting to help, asked her to name things that started with T, she hit him again.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“Then stop trying to teach me! You cain’t! Only Luke can!”
“Someone’s coming,” Jason said. Colin heard it; the subtle change in the background noise of air and ground. Footsteps. Colin even knew whose.
“Well, young’uns, here y’all are. Your grandma and Ms. Blake say to come on in, you’re late for dinner. Having fun out here?”
“Yes, sir,” Jason said.
“Good, good. Come on in now. Don’t want the womenfolk mad, do we?” He lumbered off.
Ava looked after him with eyes sparkling with hatred.
Jason said. “Why don’t you like him?”
“He’s bad. Bad, bad, bad! He don’t love Mama, he don’t even like her, he said he’ll marry her just so’s he can get me. And he don’t like me neither. He just uses me for all those tests while Mama’s gone to the hospital to get her face fixed. I’m sick of tests all the time. Even if Devil Stubbins’s gonna fix my face, too.”
Fix her face? And her mother’s face? Could Mr. Stubbins do that? Colin thought Mr. Stubbins could only build spaceships. And he’d never seen Mr. Stubbins do anything bad.
She said, “Just ’cause my mama’s crazy don’t mean he should treat her like he do.”
“What does he—”
“Oh, shut up, Colin, you’re such a baby.” She stalked off. Colin didn’t understand any of it. It was the first thing he didn’t even want to understand.
* * *
Ms. Blake was sick with something. She was in the infirmary, which was a little hospital in camp, littler than the one Daddy was in or the one where Ava’s mama was away getting her face fixed. Colin liked Ms. Blake and hoped she got better, but the great thing was that Grandma didn’t know yet that the teacher was sick. So after some grown-up came to their classroom to tell them that and then left again, nobody told them where they were supposed to be.
“We should go find Grandma,” Jason said.
“No!” Colin said. He was mad at Grandma today. She’d found them all playing Ataka! and asked them where they got it. When Jason said “From Mr. Stubbins,” Grandma’s mouth got all pressed together and she made them show her how to play it. Then she said it was too violent and deleted it off the player, and it was Colin’s best game. He was almost to the third level.
Jason nodded. He was mad at Grandma, too. He said, “Then let’s go on a hike. We’ll take provisions.”
Colin didn’t know what “provisions” were but they turned out just to be food: apples and water bottles and some stolen cookies. The children slipped between buildings, trying to not be seen, until they were at the edge of camp. Then they crawled across a place with deep grass, pretending that bad guys were after them. Then they ran into the tiny woods and collapsed, laughing. Jason tossed everybody an apple.
Ava let hers roll away. She said, “There’s people down there.”
Colin, still holding his apple, tipped himself over and pressed his ear to the ground. Ava was right.
Jason said, “What do you hear?”
“People,” Ava said. “In a cave.”
Colin nodded. They’d all listened to the underground buildings all over camp, most of which were filled with machinery. They also listened to a few real caves, small spaces that Grandma said were mostly filled with mud. This cave was like the underground bunkers for attacks but bigger. Colin said, “People are down there—and mouses! I mean, mice!”
“Cool!” Jason said. “How many mice?”
“Lots,” Luke said. “I wish we could see them.”
“Well, we can’t,” Jason said. “Because then the people would see us.”
Ava said, her ear pressed to the dirt, “Them people are mad.”
They were; Colin could hear it, too. Not real words, but angry noises. He didn’t like to listen to angry people, so he was glad when Jason said, “You know what—let’s look for mice up here!”
“Yeah!” Luke said.
They walked around under the trees, Colin, Luke, and Ava as carefully and quietly as they could, listening hard. Jason kept lookout. Colin found a mouse first, not underground but scurrying across a little clearing. “Look, there!” But by the time the others turned their heads, the mouse was gone. Still, Colin had seen it clearly: a tiny brown mouse with a black stripe down its back, little ears, and a really long tail.
Ava said, “Over here!”
The boys raced to her. The only thing to see was a small hole in the ground, but w
hen Colin, Ava, and Luke put their ears to the ground, they could hear them clearly.
“Six babies,” Luke said. “They want their mommy.”
“Let’s wait to see her come home,” Jason said.
They settled down around the hole and waited. Colin got thirsty, but he didn’t want to move until Jason said to. Finally Jason said, “She’s not coming home. And we have to go back.”
They got to their feet. The walk back wasn’t as much fun as the hike out. But still, it was a good day. Mice were a lot more interesting than people, even angry people underground. And Jason said they could come back every day to check on the baby mice. Maybe the mother mouse would even come home while they were there. Maybe the babies could be pets. And maybe he’d see that other mouse again, the striped one.
Colin was really glad that mice were back in the world.
* * *
Marianne visited Ryan every two weeks. A helicopter took her directly from the Venture site to Oakwood Gardens. Ryan never seemed either better or worse. Marianne carried on a mostly one-sided conversation with her son, although she could see he was trying to be present for her, trying to fight his way up from the dark cave into which he had fallen. When the effort exhausted him too much, she left, still smiling, careful to not let her face collapse until she was outside. On a day of wind, threatening snow, she was hurrying across the frozen lawn on her way back to the waiting chopper when Tim Saunders suddenly materialized at her elbow.
She gasped, “How did you get in here?”
“Climbed the fence. Security here is shit. Marianne, I gotta talk to you. It’s urgent.”
Looking at him, Marianne felt a faint echo of the desire that had propelled her for so long. Tim looked good: tanned, lean, his blue eyes intense as always under the tousled fall of mahogany hair. But the echo was faint. And nothing in his face said that he was rushing back to her out of unconquerable love.
“Okay. Talk.” It came out harsher than she intended.
“Yeah, here is good. But first … just let me…” He moved toward her, his hands moving over her body. She jumped back, but then realized he was checking her clothes for trackers. He found one. Carefully he removed it, carried it several yards away, and laid it on the winter grass.