Armageddons

by Jack Dann

  Segueno nodded automatically, whispering. "I received a bulletin on the way here. Something about an unusual property . . ."

  His voice trickled away. The moths threw frantic shadows over tight faces that gleamed with sweat.

  "Then . . . they will recover. But be infertile."

  Todd breathed out, tensions he did not know that he carried now released. "There. It's done."

  "So you did not intend to kill many."

  Amy said with cool deliberation, "That is an unavoidable side effect. The fever kills weak people, mostly elderly. We couldn't find any way to edit it out."

  "My God . . . There will be no children."

  Todd shook his head. "About fifteen percent of the time it doesn't work through all the ovarian follicles. The next generation will drop in population almost an order of magnitude."

  Segueno's mouth compressed, lips white. "You are the greatest criminals of all time."

  "Probably," Todd said. He felt suddenly tired now that the job was done. And he didn't much care what anybody thought.

  "You will be executed."

  "Probably," Amy said.

  "How . . . how could you . . . ?"

  "Our love got us through it," Todd said fiercely. "We could not have children ourselves—a tilted uterus. We simply extended the method."

  Amy said in her flat, abstract tone, "We tried attaching an acrosome to sperm, but males can always make new ones. Females are the key. They've got a few hundred ova. Get those, you've solved the problem. Saved the world."

  "To rescue the environment," Todd knew he had to say this right. "To stop the madness of more and more people."

  Segueno looked at them with revulsion. "You know we will stop it. Distribute the vaccine."

  Amy smiled, a slow sliding of lips beneath flinty eyes. "Sure. And you're wondering why we're so calm."

  "That is obvious. You are insane. From the highest cultures, the most advanced—such savagery."

  "Where else? We respect the environment. We don't breed like animals."

  "You, you are . . ." Again Segueno's voice trickled away.

  Todd saw the narrowed eyes, the straining jaw muscles, the sheen of sweat in this tight-lipped U.N. bureaucrat and wondered just how a man of such limited horizons could think his disapproval would matter to them. To people who had decided to give themselves to save the world. What a tiny, ordinary mind.

  Amy hugged her husband. "At least now we'll be together."

  Segueno said bitterly, "We shall try you under local statutes. Make an example. And the rest of your gang, too—we shall track them all down."

  The two on the cot sat undisturbed, hugging each other tightly. Todd kissed Amy. They had lived through these moments in imagination many times.

  Loudly Segueno said, "You shall live just long enough to see the vaccine stop your plan."

  Amy kissed Todd, long and lingering, and then looked up. "Oh, really? And you believe the North will pay for it? When they can just drag their feet, and let it spread unchecked in the tropics?"

  Todd smiled grimly. "After they've inoculated themselves, they'll be putting their energy into a 'womb race'—finding fertile women, a 'national natural resource.' Far too busy. And the superflu will do its job."

  Segueno's face congested, reddened. Todd watched shock and fear and then rage flit across the man's face. The logic, the inevitable cool logic to it, had finally hit him.

  Somehow this last twist had snagged somewhere in Segueno, pushed him over the line. Todd saw something compressed and dark in the face, too late. My mouth, he thought. I've killed us both.

  Segueno snatched the pistol from the guard and Todd saw that they would not get to witness the last, pleasant irony, the dance of nations, acted out after all.

  It was the last thing he thought, and yet it was only a mild regret.

  EVOLUTION

  Nancy Kress

  We may have already made the fatal mistakes that will lead to our doom, as inevitable but unexpected consequences of decisions made long past—decisions so commonplace and everyday that we didn't even stop to think about them, like swallowing the pill your doctor prescribes for you when you're sick—relentlessly back us into corners nobody had ever foreseen. As portrayed in the unsettling story that follows, which takes us to an all-too-likely future (one that is, in fact, just about here) for a grim lesson in how evolution really works, however much we'd like to think that modern medical science has put us safely beyond its reach . . .

  Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid-'70s, and has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, and elsewhere. Her books include the novels The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, the novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning story, "Beggars in Spain," and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, and Oaths & Miracles. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories and The Aliens of Earth. Her most recent novels are Maximum Light and Stinger. She has also won Nebula Awards for her stories "Out of All Them Bright Stars" and "The Flowers of Aulit Prison." Born in Buffalo, New York, she now lives in Silver Springs, Maryland, with her husband, SF writer Charles Sheffield.

  Somebody shot and killed Dr. Bennett behind the Food Mart on April Street!" Ceci Moore says breathlessly as I take the washing off the line. I stand with a pair of Jack's boxer shorts in my hand and stare at her. I don't like Ceci. Her smirking pushiness, her need to shove her scrawny body into the middle of every situation, even ones she'd be better off leaving alone. She's been that way since high school. But we're neighbors; we're stuck with each other. Dr. Bennett delivered both Sean and Jackie. Slowly I fold the boxer shorts and lay them in my clothes-basket.

  "Well, Betty, aren't you even going to say anything?"

  "Have the police arrested anybody?"

  "Janie Brunelli says there's no suspects." Tom Brunelli is one of Emerton's police officers, all five of them. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut. "Honestly, Betty, you look like there's a murder in this town every day!"

  "Was it in the parking lot?" I'm in that parking lot behind the Food Mart every week. It's unpaved, just hard-packed rocky dirt sloping down to a low concrete wall by the river. I take Jackie's sheets off the line. Belle, Ariel, and Princess Jasmine all smile through fields of flowers.

  "Yes, in the parking lot," Ceci says. "Near the dumpsters. There must have been a silencer on the rifle, nobody heard anything. Tom found two .22 250 semiautomatic cartridges." Ceci knows about guns. Her house is full of them. "Betty, why don't you put all this wash in your dryer and save yourself the trouble of hanging it all out?"

  "I like the way it smells line-dried. And I can hear Jackie through the window."

  Instantly Ceci's face changes. "Jackie's home from school? Why?"

  "She has a cold."

  "Are you sure it's just a cold?"

  "I'm sure." I take the clothespins off Sean's T-shirt. The front says see dick drink, see dick drive, see dick die. "Ceci, Jackie is not on any antibiotics."

  "Good thing," Ceci says, and for a moment she studies her fingernails, very casual. "They say Dr. Bennett prescribed endozine again last week. For the youngest Nordstrum boy. Without sending him to the hospital."

  I don't answer. The back of Sean's t-shirt says don't be a dick. Irritated by my silence, Ceci says, "I don't see how you can let your son wear that obscene clothing!"

  "It's his choice. Besides, Ceci, it's a health message. About not drinking and driving. Aren't you the one that thinks strong health messages are a good thing?"

  Our eyes lock. The silence lengthens. Finally Ceci says, "Well, haven't we gotten serious all of a sudden."

  I say, "Murder is serious."

  "Yes. I'm sure the cops will catch whoever did it. Probably one of those scum that hang around the Rainbow Bar."

  "Dr. Bennett wasn't the type to hang around with scum."

  "Oh, I don't mean he knew
them. Some lowlife probably killed him for his wallet." She looks straight into my eyes. "I can't think of any other motive. Can you?"

  I look east, toward the river. On the other side, just visible over the tops of houses on its little hill, rise the three stories of Emerton Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital. The bridge over the river was blown up three weeks ago. No injuries, no suspects. Now anybody who wants to go to the hospital has to drive ten miles up West River Road and cross at the Interstate. Jack told me that the Department of Transportation says two years to get a new bridge built.

  I say, "Dr. Bennett was a good doctor. And a good man."

  "Well, did anybody say he wasn't? Really, Betty, you should use your dryer and save yourself all that bending and stooping. Bad for the back. We're not getting any younger. Ta-ta." She waves her right hand, just a waggle of fingers, and walks off. Her nails, I notice, are painted the delicate fragile pinky-white of freshly unscabbed skin.

  "You have no proof," Jack says "Just some wild suspicions."

  He has his stubborn face on. He sits with his Michelob at the kitchen table, dog-tired from his factory shift plus three hours overtime, and he doesn't want to hear this. I don't blame him. I don't want to be saying it. In the living room Jackie plays Nintendo frantically, trying to cram in as many electronic explosions as she can before her father claims the TV for Monday Night Football. Sean has already gone out with his friends, before his stepfather got home.

  I sit down across from Jack, a fresh mug of coffee cradled between my palms. For warmth. "I know I don't have any proof, Jack. I'm not some detective."

  "So let the cops handle it. It's their business, not ours. You stay out of it."

  "I am out of it. You know that." Jack nods. We don't mix with cops, don't serve on any town committees, don't even listen to the news much. We don't get involved with what doesn't concern us. Jack never did. I add, "I'm just telling you what I think. I can do that, can't I?" and hear my voice stuck someplace between pleading and anger.

  Jack hears it, too. He scowls, stands with his beer, puts his hand gently on my shoulder. "Sure, Bets. You can say whatever you want to me. But nobody else, you hear? I don't want no trouble, especially to you and the kids. This ain't our problem. Just be grateful we're all healthy, knock on wood."

  He smiles and goes into the living room. Jackie switches off the Nintendo without being yelled at; she's good that way. I look out the kitchen window, but it's too dark to see anything but my own reflection, and anyway the window faces north, not east.

  I haven't crossed the river since Jackie was born at Emerton Memorial, seven years ago. And then I was in the hospital less than twenty-four hours before I made Jack take me home. Not because of the infections, of course—that hadn't all started yet. But it has now, and what if next time instead of the youngest Nordstrum boy, it's Jackie who needs endozine? Or Sean?

  Once you've been to Emerton Memorial, nobody but your family will go near you. And sometimes not even them. When Mrs. Weimer came home from surgery, her daughter-in-law put her in that back upstairs room and left her food on disposable trays in the doorway and put in a chemical toilet. Didn't even help the old lady crawl out of bed to use it. For a whole month it went on like that—surgical masks, gloves, paper gowns—until Rosie Weimer was positive Mrs. Weimer hadn't picked up any mutated drug-resistant bacteria in Emerton Memorial. And Hal Weimer didn't say a word against his wife.

  "People are scared, but they'll do the right thing," Jack said, the only other time I tried to talk to him about it. Jack isn't much for talking. And so I don't. I owe him that.

  But in the city—in all the cities—they're not just scared. They're terrified. Even without listening to the news I hear about the riots and the special government police and half the population sick with the new germs that only endozine cures—sometimes. I don't see how they're going to have much energy for one murdered small-town doctor. And I don't share Jack's conviction that people in Emerton will automatically do the right thing. I remember all too well that sometimes they don't. How come Jack doesn't remember, too?

  But he's right about one thing: I don't owe this town anything.

  I stack the supper dishes in the sink and get Jackie started on her homework.

  The next day, I drive down to the Food Mart parking lot.

  There isn't much to see. It rained last night. Next to the dumpster lie a wadded-up surgical glove and a piece of yellow tape like the police use around a crime scene. Also some of those little black cardboard boxes from the stuff that gets used up by the new holographic TV cameras. That's it.

  "You heard what happened to Dr. Bennett?" I say to Sean at dinner. Jack's working again. Jackie sits playing with the Barbie doll she doesn't know I know she has on her lap.

  Sean looks at me sideways, under the heavy fringe of his dark bangs, and I can't read his expression. "He was killed for giving out too many antibiotics."

  Jackie looks up. "Who killed the doctor?"

  "The bastards that think they run this town," Sean says. He flicks the hair out of his eyes. His face is ashy gray. "Fucking vigilantes'll get us all."

  "That's enough, Sean," I say.

  Jackie's lip trembles. "Who'll get us all? Mommy . . ."

  "Nobody's getting anybody," I say. "Sean, stop it. You're scaring her."

  "Well, she should be scared," Sean says, but he shuts up and stares bleakly at his plate. Sixteen now, I've had him for sixteen years. Watching him, his thick dark hair and sulky mouth, I think that it's a sin to have a favorite child. And that I can't help it, and that I would, God forgive me, sacrifice both Jackie and Jack for this boy.

  "I want you to clean the garage tonight, Sean. You promised Jack three days ago now."

  "Tomorrow. Tonight I have to go out."

  Jackie says, "Why should I be scared?"

  "Tonight," I say.

  Sean looks at me with teenage desperation. His eyes are very blue. "Not tonight, I have to go out."

  Jackie says, "Why should I—"

  I say, "You're staying home and cleaning the garage."

  "No." He glares at me, and then breaks. He has his father's looks, but he's not really like his father. There are even tears in the corners of his eyes. "I'll do it tomorrow, Mom, I promise. Right after school. But tonight I have to go out."

  "Where?"

  "Just out."

  Jackie says, "Why should I be scared? Scared of what? Mommy!"

  Sean turns to her. "You shouldn't be scared, Jack-o-lantern. Everything's going to be all right. One way or another."

  I listen to the tone of his voice and suddenly fear shoots through me, piercing as childbirth. I say, "Jackie, you can play Nintendo now. I'll clear the table."

  Her face brightens. She skips into the living room and I look at my son. "What does that mean? 'One way or another'? Sean, what's going on?"

  "Nothing," he says, and then despite his ashy color he looks me straight in the eyes, and smiles tenderly, and for the first time—the very first time—I see his resemblance to his father. He can lie to me with tenderness.

  Two days later, just after I return from the Food Mart, they contact me.

  The murder was on the news for two nights, and then disappeared. Over the parking lot is scattered more TV-camera litter. There's also a wine bottle buried halfway into the hard ground, with a bouquet of yellow roses in it. Nearby is an empty basket, the kind that comes filled with expensive dried flowers at Blossoms by Bonnie, weighted down with stones. Staring at it, I remember that Bonnie Widelstein went out of business a few months ago. A drug-resistant abscess, and after she got out of Emerton Memorial, nobody on this side of the river would buy flowers from her.

  At home, Sylvia James is sitting in my driveway in her black Algol. As soon as I see her, I put it together.

  "Sylvia," I say tonelessly.

  She climbs out of the sportscar and smiles a social smile. "Elizabeth! How good to see you!" I don't answer. She hasn't seen me in seventeen years. She's carrying
a cheese kuchen, like some sort of key into my house. She's still blonde, still slim, still well dressed. Her lipstick is bright red, which is what her face should be.

  I let her in anyway, my heart making slow hard thuds in my chest. Sean. Sean.

  Once inside, her hard smile fades and she has the grace to look embarrassed. "Elizabeth—"

  "Betty," I say. "I go by Betty now."

  "Betty. First off, I want to apologize for not being . . . for not standing by you in that mess. I know it was so long ago, but even so, I—I wasn't a very good friend." She hesitates. "I was frightened by it all."

  I want to say, You were frightened? But I don't.

  I never think of the whole dumb story any more. Not even when I look at Sean. Especially not when I look at Sean.

  Seventeen years ago, when Sylvia and I were seniors in high school, we were best friends. Neither of us had a sister, so we made each other into that, even though her family wasn't crazy about their precious daughter hanging around with someone like me. The Goddards live on the other side of the river. Sylvia ignored them, and I ignored the drunken warnings of my aunt, the closest thing I had to a family. The differences didn't matter. We were Sylvia-and-Elizabeth, the two prettiest and boldest girls in the senior class who had an academic future.

  And then, suddenly, I didn't. At Elizabeth 's house I met Randolf Satler, young resident in her father's unit at the hospital. And I got pregnant, and Randy dumped me, and I refused a paternity test because if he didn't want me and the baby I had too much pride to force myself on any man. That's what I told everyone, including myself. I was eighteen years old. I didn't know what a common story mine was, or what a dreary one. I thought I was the only one in the whole wide world who had ever felt this bad.

  So after Sean was born at Emerton Memorial and Randy got engaged the day I moved my baby "home" to my dying aunt's, I bought a Smith & Wesson revolver in the city and shot out the windows of Randy's supposedly empty house across the river. I hit the gardener, who was helping himself to the Satler liquor cabinet in the living room. The judge gave me seven-and-a-half to ten, and I served five, and that only because my lawyer pleaded post-partum depression. The gardener recovered and retired to Miami, and Dr. Satler went on to become Chief of Medicine at Emerton Memorial and a lot of other important things in the city, and Sylvia never visited me once in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Nobody did, except Jack. Who, when Sylvia-and-Elizabeth were strutting their stuff at Emerton High, had already dropped out and was bagging groceries at the Food Mart. After I got out of Bedford, the only reason the foster care people would give me Sean back was because Jack married me.