Nancy Kress

by Nothing Human

  Theresa studied him. There were people, she knew, who made their own alienations in life. Maybe DeWayne was one of those. Maybe he’d never belonged because, feeling so different, he never let himself belong. Like, she thought, her throat closing with the old anxiety, like Carlo. DeWayne didn’t look like a man who made emotional revelations easily. Talking to her like this, on her porch long since wind-scoured of any paint, had cost him. Was he telling the truth? Well, Scott and Rafe could check that out on the Net. Could he be trusted? That was a much tougher question.

  And then he said, not looking at her, “Rafe said Sajelle is here. And that she isn’t married.”

  Oh, God. Damn Rafe! “DeWayne … I have to talk to my sons and daughter about this. Could you come back tomorrow? I’m afraid I can’t let you stay here, but there’s a sort of inn in Wenton … who’s that sitting in your car?”

  “Bodyguard. But he won’t be staying. I’ll send him back to the enclave, he—” DeWayne stopped dead.

  Sajelle was hurrying up the path from the chicken coop, carrying a basket of fresh eggs clutched against her chest against the wind. Her dreadlocks tossed wildly. Bent over the eggs, she didn’t notice DeWayne until she’d rushed into the comparative shelter of the porch and nearly run into him. Sajelle looked confused to see a stranger, a black man, on the porch. DeWayne hadn’t recognized Theresa right away. Not so now.

  He said dazedly, “Sajelle?”

  Theresa thought of saying this was Sajelle’s daughter. But Sajelle herself recognized something in his voice or manner. “DeWayne? DeWayne Freeman?”

  He seemed unable to speak. Theresa said, “You might as well come in, DeWayne. There are a few little things we’re going to have to explain to you.”

  CHAPTER 17

  DeWayne stayed, and many things became possible.

  In the late spring, Rafe, Emily, and Lillie waylaid Theresa in the barn, pitching hay to the horses. “Tess, we need to talk to you.”

  “So talk. But if you’re going to tell me more bad news about the Chinese, forget it. I don’t want to hear it until I have to.”

  “It’s not about the Chinese,” Lillie said. “We have a proposition. We want to convince you so you can convince the others.”

  Theresa put down her pitchfork and looked at Lillie, who stood a little in front of the others and was clearly their designated spokesman. Lillie had regained her figure after the triplets’ birth more quickly than the other girls. She stood slim and young, direct, her gaze meeting Theresa’s squarely. Lillie’s babies, Theresa knew, were right now being bathed by Carolina and Lupe. Whenever Lillie looked at her children there was a faintly puzzled look in her gray eyes: Mine? Theresa did not understand.

  “You know that we learned a lot of genetics aboard the pribir ship,” Lillie said. “We only know how to use pribir equipment, though. But Scott has been teaching Rafe and Emily how to use his Sparks-Markham, plus all the new stuff DeWayne bought, and they’ve been teaching Scott what the pribir taught us. They remember a lot, unlike me and the rest.”

  “Yes,” Theresa said neutrally. Why didn’t Lillie feel more involved with her babies? They were adorable, especially little Cord. He had Lillie’s eyes, gray with gold flecks.

  “Rafe and Emily put some of the hay genes through the scanner. Also rice from the sacks Carlo bought in Wenton. They experimented with the splicer, and they think they can create hay that will have three times the yield on the same plot of land, and rice that will grow here in the summer rains.”

  Three times the yield. They could run more cattle, lots more. The range grew more vegetation than ever, but there was still not enough to sustain her herd year-round without feed. The amount of hay had been the limiting factor on how much cattle she could run. And if rice, which had never in the history of the world grown here, could be raised as a cash crop, the market for it would be large and close. Cheap transportation costs …

  Suddenly it hit her. ”’ Create.’ You mean genetically engineered crops.”

  “Yes,” Rafe said eagerly over Lillie’s shoulder.

  “Anything to do with genetically engineered crops is illegal. You know that. Anything to do with genetically engineered anything — that’s why we’ve been so careful!”

  “And we’ll go on being careful,” Lillie said. “No one will know, anymore than they know about us, or about the babies. And anyway you said there’s no law to — “

  “There’s vigilantes,” Theresa said harshly. “God, you three don’t remember. You weren’t here during the war.” The labs and corporations that had been the targets of mob rage during and right after the biowar. The CEO of Monsanto had been disemboweled alive. Theresa had seen a Net video.

  “That was eleven years ago,” Lillie said logically. “And anyway, no one will know. Wenton doesn’t have any gene-analyzing equipment. We’ll just say DeWayne bought a different kind of seed from back East, and we’ll offer to share planting seeds for the hay with anyone who wants them. Look, Tess, I’ve done some figures.”

  Lillie held out a piece of DeWayne’s grayish paper, another new luxury, and began to go over the numbers for Tess. Costs, needed labor, projected market price, possible profit range. The handwriting was the round unformed hand of a schoolgirl.

  “Lillie, who taught you to do this?”

  Lillie looked surprised. “Nobody taught me. It’s just common sense.”

  And Lillie had always had a lot of that. No maternal feelings, but a direct pragmatism even greater than Theresa’s own. She said, “Does Scott know all this?”

  “No,” Lillie said.

  Rafe said transparently, “We thought you, as boss, were entitled to see it first.”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” Lillie said. “Scott isn’t going to like it. He wants us to keep as much out of public notice as possible. We’re showing it to you first so you can change his mind.”

  Emily said eagerly, “We know it will work!” Unlike Lillie, she had baby-food stains all down the front of her maternity smock, which she was still wearing because she hadn’t lost all her pregnancy weight.

  Theresa looked at the three young faces: Rafe excited, Emily hopeful, Lillie coolly considering. It was an interesting idea. Rice … Theresa could almost see the low green plants growing in the flat land below the cottongrove, where the creek flooded regularly. Regularly enough? Maybe they could build a little dam …

  “I’ll talk to Scott,” she said, “and Jody, Senni, Carlo, and Spring. We’ll see.”

  “We can increase farm income by about twenty percent, not counting DeWayne’s contribution,” Lillie said. “That’s a lot of flour and cloth and ammunition.”

  “Not,” Theresa noticed, “a lot of diapers.” Oh, Lillie.

  After much argument, they planted a test crop of the genetically engineered crops. Both hay and rice flourished. It was only a few inconspicuous square yards of land under cultivation this year, but next year…

  Sajelle married DeWayne in July. She was fifteen, he was fifty-four. Senni thought it was “obscene,” but Theresa only shrugged. Things were different now. Statutory rape laws belonged to another life. DeWayne was good to Sajelle, she made him happy, and her children’s future was assured. Within two months Sajelle was pregnant again.

  The babies turned eight months old. With Senni’s nine-month Clari, there were fifteen babies crawling around the great room, pulling themselves up on furniture, throwing around food, babbling at each other. Without the three Mexican girls, caring for them would have been impossible. All of the children were beautiful. None had ever had as much as a cold. Scott could find nothing abnormal in any of their physiology.

  That summer Carlo married Rosalita. Theresa, who was afraid that Carlo would someday announce he wanted to be a priest, was relieved. Everyone pitched in to expand housing, and eventually there was a compound of four houses, one large and three smaller, and everyone had more room.

  Another group of refugees attacked, but they were ill-equipped and easily driven off with
guns. Only one was killed. Theresa didn’t ask where Jody, Bonnie, and Sam buried him.

  The Chinese threat abated, presumably due to some mysterious cycle of political fluctuation. Maybe the Chinese were also becoming more prosperous, less desperate. Maybe not. Theresa didn’t care just so long as the word “war” disappeared from farm conversations.

  That summer, the horrendous storms leveled off. Net news said the global warming seemed to have stabilized, perhaps due to the drastic cutback of greenhouse gases since the war. Theresa’s land remained fertile, and the range was better watered than ever before. She allowed herself to be hopeful, then grateful, then happy. They were going to make it.

  Just after she’d decided this, the delegation from Wenton arrived.

  “Come in,” Theresa said, because she couldn’t keep them standing on the porch. There were six of them, arriving in the early afternoon, an indication of how far the weather had softened. The wind still blew till sundown, but it had less force, less grit, less unrelenting howl. The delegation came in a car, as new as DeWayne’s but larger and very simple, a closed metal box on a slow-moving, fuel-cell-driven base. Still, the fact that new, non-luxury cars were available in a place like Wenton felt significant to Theresa.

  She studied them as they filed into the great room. Three of the babies crawled around under Carolina’s watchful eye. The rest were either in the smaller houses or napping. Everyone else who could be was out harvesting.

  Old Tom Carter, who used to run the storage building that was no longer needed. Rachel Monaghan, a woman Theresa’s age, who kept a cloth and clothing store. Lucy Tetrino from the train station. Bill Walewski, the grain buyer. Two hard-faced men she didn’t recognize. She saw Rachel’s lips purse at the sight of Carolina.

  “Carolina,” Theresa said pleasantly, “take the babies down to Senni’s, please. Everyone, sit down anywhere you like.”

  Carolina cast one frightened look at the Wenton delegation, then piled all three babies into a huge basket and hoisted it to her hip. She was much stronger than she looked. The children gurgled delightedly. Carolina hurried outside.

  “My daughter-in-law, Jody’s wife,” Theresa said. A pre-emptive strike.

  “So we heard,” Lucy Tetrino said, and from her tone Theresa knew that Wenton didn’t like having the Mexican girls and Juan here but that they weren’t the reason for this visit. The delegation scanned the great room, with its litter of baby clothes, leftover beans and rice on the table, guns high on the wall where the children couldn’t reach. The room smelled of candles and diapers and food and the vase of wild roses Sajelle had picked by the creek.

  “Theresa,” Bill Walewski said, “I guess I better start, since I’m the new mayor of Wenton.”

  “Congratulations,” Theresa said. She hadn’t even known there’d been an election.

  “Thanks. The reason we’re here is that there’ve been some pretty strange rumors going around town about you this last year.”

  “Really.” Bill didn’t meet her eyes. Whatever was going on, he wasn’t fully behind it.

  “Yes. People are saying … people are wondering how you could have got all these teenage girls, all pregnant at the same time, all having twins or triplets or even quads. Pretty peculiar.”

  “There are no quads,” Theresa said.

  “But there are twins and triplets,” Lucy put in.

  “Yes.” She didn’t explain that there would have been only triplets if one of Julie’s infants hadn’t died.

  “Well, don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Lucy said.

  “More than ‘weird,’” said one of the strangers. “It’s obscene,” and Theresa knew the source of the delegation.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t get your name, sir.” Courtesy just this side of insolence.

  “Matt Campion. I represent America Restored.” He didn’t smile.

  Theresa said, “Restored to what?”

  “To livability. To respect for the natural ecology of this great country. To decent acknowledgment of human limitations, so that we don’t destroy ourselves by mucking around with forces beyond our ability to understand or control.”

  An anti-science league. Well, Wenton had escaped longer than many places. “I see.”

  “I doubt it,” Campion said.

  Old Tom said hastily, “We’ve all known you a long time, Theresa, and—”

  “Yes, you have, Tom. Rachel, I’ve been buying cloth from you for sixteen years now. Bill, you’ve been buying grain from me for … how long?”

  “Nine years,” Bill said unhappily.

  “Right. And Lucy, we’ve ridden the train and shipped supplies on it since my husband and I came to this state.”

  “None of that is relevant,” Campion said harshly. “We’re here to find out what’s going on at this farm, Ms. Romero. How come you have all these girls simultaneously giving birth to triplets?”

  “That’s not hard to explain,” Theresa said. The explanation had been ready for a year. “You know that Dr. Wilkins boards here. We’re old friends, from before the war. After his wife died, he came here to practice because I told him there was no doctor anywhere around and he was both needed and could build a good practice here.”

  “That’s true,” Tom put in, nodding vigorously. “Dr. Wilkins came about a year and a half ago.”

  “Yes,” Theresa continued. “Before that, he practiced in Illinois. He did pro bono work there, too. One of his projects was a home for unwed mothers.” Briefly Theresa remembered the flamboyant, loose sexual atmosphere of her youth. All that had been swept away; homes for unwed mothers were plausible again. “The home was going to close. No credit. Five of the girls had no place to go. I said Scott could bring them here.”

  “Why?” Campion demanded.

  Theresa opened her eyes wide. “Humanitarian reasons, Mr. Campion. I’m sure any organization that, like yours, values decency and respect can understand humanitarian purposes.”

  Rachel Monaghan narrowed her eyes, and Theresa told herself to watch it. Ruffling Campion wasn’t worth losing any lurking support from her long-time neighbors.

  “So that explains why the girls came here,” said the other stranger. Quieter, milder, his expression gave away nothing. “But it doesn’t explain the multiple births.”

  “No,” Theresa said.

  “Well, what about that? Isn’t it a little unusual? I’m the Reverend James Beslor, incidentally.”

  “How do you do. Yes, it is unusual. We were all surprised at so many babies.”

  Campion said in exasperation, “Well, what caused it?”

  “I have no idea,” Theresa said.

  They all stared at her.

  “Neither does Scott Wilkins. Nor the girls. Nobody even has a theory. All we know is that since the girls came to us pregnant, and my daughter hasn’t had twins or triplets, whatever happened didn’t happen on this farm. And, of course, the babies are all completely normal. You’re welcome to examine them, if you like.”

  Campion said, “We most certainly want to do that.”

  “Now? I can wake them up.”

  “No, not now,” Campion said, flushing in annoyance. “When I get a doctor out here!”

  “Any time that’s convenient,” Theresa said. Scott had assured her that no one short of a geneticist with expensive analyzers would find anything odd about the children, and it was unlikely this delegation could produce anything like that. Although, if this organization “America Restored” was big enough and funded well enough … she felt a thrill of fear.

  Campion said slowly, “There’s something else going on here. There is. Even if those girls came to you pregnant and you had nothing to do with it, the girls are still wrong. Unnatural. Dangerous. We don’t ever want another repeat of the ecological disasters that almost destroyed us. Never again.”

  Theresa made herself look bewildered. “I don’t know what more I can do, Mr. Campion. I’ve said you can examine the children, and their mothers, too, if you like. They�
��re just normal people. Statistical flukes do happen, you know, including multiple births. If you can’t prove anything else … I can tell that your belief in this country is too great to undermine the Constitutional requirement for proof before finding anyone guilty. Of anything.”

  Campion looked at her with open dislike. But Lucy said eagerly, “It’s true, Matt. Theresa has agreed to cooperate completely, nothing happened here at the farm, and there’s not any proof anything wrong ever happened at all.”

  “That’s so,” Tom said.

  Theresa stood. “Can I get you some chicory coffee? Or sumac tea?”

  Bill said abruptly, “Theresa, where did that fancy truck come from? The one Jody was driving the other day?”

  “Oh, that was recently purchased in Amarillo by a new member of our farm co-op. DeWayne Freeman. He’s a Net developer, you should look him up. Impressive guy.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He married another of our co-op members.”

  Bill nodded, satisfied. Theresa showed them out. Matt Campion gave her a hard stare. When they were out the door, Theresa closed it and leaned against it, breathing hard.

  The children were two, three, four. Nothing changed, everything changed. Carlo and his wife Rosalita left the farm, almost breaking Theresa’s heart. Carlo, ever restless, searching for something he couldn’t name, wanted to go to a religious community he’d heard about in Colorado. Theresa only hoped they would be back some day.

  Sajelle had two children with DeWayne. Carolina and Jody had a son, Angel. Scott ran genome analyses on each child minutes after the birth. The results were always the same: the frontal lobe included the dense structure connected to the huge number of receptors in the nose. The genes were dominant. The babies would be able to smell information molecules, if anyone had been able to send them.