Nancy Kress

by Nothing Human

  Scott said, “Lillie …”

  “I have to know, Scott. We have to know.”

  The pribir told them.

  “Oh my God,” Scott said.

  Emily had had a chance to talk to no one yet. As she left the lab for the big house, Cord grabbed her to say that Clari had gone into labor. “She’s screaming, Emily … I can’t stand it!”

  “Well, I don’t know why not,” Emily snapped. “You’re not in labor.”

  “I’ll go get Mom — “

  “Don’t bother. She’s too busy with the pribir. Take me to Clari.”

  Cord did, then ran to fetch Sajelle and Carolina, and then ran to sit by Clari until she whimpered for him to get out.

  So by the time Lillie reached the small house where Clari sat on the birthing stool Alex had built months ago, Clari was eight centimeters dilated. The girl squatted among the women, who wiped her face and gave her sips of water and held her hands when the pain came. “It’s going to break me in two,” Clari gasped. “Oh, save the baby if… if…”

  “None of that talk,” Sajelle said, but she shot Lillie a worried look.

  Clari had a very bad time. It wasn’t until midnight that Cord’s son slid out from her torn body, amid a wash of blood. Scott and Emily immediately sedated Clari and worked feverishly to repair the damage. Lillie held her breath until she heard the tiny, high wail. Carolina, she of the gentle hands, took the baby to the tub of heated water to be bathed, crooning to him in Spanish. “Primito, mi corazon …”

  “Can I—”

  “You get out of here, Lillie,” Sajelle ordered. “You never were any good at nursing.” Gratefully, Lillie went. She leaned against the side of the house and gulped the sweet fresh air. A figure hovered there.

  “You have a son, Cord.”

  “Can I — “

  “Not yet. Scott and Emily are — “

  It didn’t matter. He had bolted through the door. Well, sterility was a thing of the past, anyway. The pribir adjustments to the immune system made it able to fight off anything.

  No. Not anything. If that were so, there would be no need for the pribir to go on being here. And God, what a blessing that would be.

  Lillie made herself stay awake until Emily emerged. Lillie said only, “Wait until morning?”

  Emily nodded wearily, her shirt splattered with blood. “Both of us, then. To everybody at once.”

  “Okay.”

  Emily stumbled toward the lab, where she often slept. Lillie longed for sleep, but she went once more into the house to check on Clari and to see her new grandson. Cord was holding the sleeping baby, his face suffused with wonder. So he was parental, after all, as she herself had not been. Lillie breathed in relief. The baby would enrapture Cord, and Clari would see that, and the tension Lillie had detected between them during Clari’s pregnancy might wither away.

  Lillie dutifully inspected the infant. Clari’s abundant dark hair, a standard baby face. Lillie wasn’t sure she could have differentiated this child from Kella’s dark-haired one. Or maybe even from any dark-haired infant on the farm.

  But this one was different. If the pribir had their way, it would be the last human-looking child ever born.

  CHAPTER 27

  It rained that next, crucial morning, a steady warm thunderless gift of water that greened the desert, filled the cisterns, and slid gracefully down the glass windows. Rafe and Spring planned on going to Wenton, eventually, to scavenge for anything useful, including more glass windows pried from the deserted buildings. Once they were convinced the town was truly deserted, for good.

  Lillie and Emily stood by the cold fireplace, facing everyone else seated or standing around the great room. All the infants except Clari’s were in the adjoining den, with the childminders on duty hovering in the doorway between rooms. This early in the morning the room was at least cool, even with this many bodies packed in. It smelled of rain and cattle and babies and chicory coffee carried hot from the cookshack that kept cooking heat away from the big house.

  Emily talked first, and Lillie had a sudden, useless flash of memory: Emily standing shyly alongside Rafe in the classroom aboard the Flyer, supplying Pam with the English words for genetic concepts. Emily blushing, proud of her ability to help these wonderful teachers in this most wonderful school.

  Emily surveyed the tense faces in the great room and spoke with restraint. Lillie saw what that cost her. ” — and the rabbit population is poison to us now, or soon will be. There may or may not be difficulties with eating some plants, and more difficulties might develop later. The pribir say we can’t survive with all the changes that are going to happen on Earth. So they want to … want to …”

  Emily licked her lips, and chose her words with care. “… to reengineer our genes again. To create embryos and implant them in fertile females, as they did aboard the ship fifteen years ago. But this time, the embryos will be much different from us. The pribir say they will have a different shape, different internal functions, different diets and … they’re not sure yet of all the necessary changes. But one thing the aliens are very clear on. These offspring we will give birth to will not be human, and they will eventually replace humans on the planet.”

  There was stunned silence. Lillie stepped into it.

  “Emily has told you the truth, but she’s left a few things out. First, the alternative to the pribir plan is death to the human race, forever. The genemods we already have, that the last two generations have, aren’t enough to let us adapt to what might happen to Earth. The bioweapons are too many and too persistent, and they’re mutating. Also, climate changes aren’t settling back down as we hoped they would. Rafe ran a computer simulation, and the global warming is caught in a feedback loop. All the sensors still transmitting from the upper atmosphere say the methane, ozone, and carbon dioxide are all increasing. Down here it’s only going to get worse. Our choice is simple: we do what the pribir suggest or our descendants all die.

  “Second, there’s a big difference between this engineering and the last one. The pribir are asking our permission. They won’t go ahead with any embryo implants in anybody without consent.”

  Scott stirred on his bench. Lillie met his eyes steadily, and held her breath. If he disputed that statement, the argument was over. Scott said nothing.

  Rafe called out, “Lillie, you said ‘what might happen to Earth.’ Maybe the jackrabbits are the only thing that will be affected, and otherwise we can go on like we are now. Or the Earth’s natural homeostasis might kick in.”

  “No homeostasis has kicked in so far. At all.”

  Sajelle said, “I’d rather take our chances with Mother Nature than with the pribir!”

  “Me, too!” Alex.

  “And me!”

  “And me!” The calling came faster, louder, angrier.

  Spring, the peacemaker, stood. “I’m no scientist, God and everybody else knows, but couldn’t the pribir just… Emily said the rabbits and maybe the mesquite, couldn’t the pribir just reengineer those things? Instead of us?”

  Shouted agreements. Lillie held up her hand, but it was a long time before she could get their attention. She said, “The problem with that idea is that other genetic changes might affect other foods, and not even the pribir know which ones. There are some nasty transposons out there, splicing genes into many different living things. The pribir can’t tell what will be next. The increased UV is causing a lot more mutations than ever before. Plus, the pribir are leaving soon, so they can’t go on fixing things for us.”

  “Fucking things up, you mean,” Robin called bitterly.

  “At least they’re leaving!”

  “Maybe this time they’ll stay away!”

  No chance at all, Lillie thought. A few more months in space for Pam and Pete, a few decades gone on Earth, and they’d be back.

  Senni snarled, “Lillie, why are you on their side anyway? Deserting your own race?”

  She’d expected this. “No. Trying to help it.”
>
  Rafe stood, a far more dangerous opponent than Senni. “You hated what the pribir did to us as much as anybody. You were a major victim, remember? Rape, manipulation, experimenting on human beings … what happened to your outrage at those things, Lillie? Are the pribir manipulating you right this minute, with mind drugs?”

  “No!”

  “How would you know?”

  Emily said harshly, “She wouldn’t.”

  Julie stood. Julie, fearful, clutching Spring’s shoulder for support. “I think … I think Lillie’s right.” Everyone turned in amazement.

  “I lost one of my babies, remember. Dakota and Felicity’s sister. We don’t even know what killed her. I held that little still body and … If the pribir can make it so no other mother loses a child … then it’s worth it. It is! None of the rest of you except Angie know that because you haven’t gone through it. But I did. It doesn’t matter what your children look like, as long as they get the chance to live.” She collapsed into her seat and buried her face in Spring’s chest.

  Ashley shouted, “It matters to me whether what I give birth to is human. If it’s not, it’s not my child.”

  Lillie said, “Who gets to define ‘human’?”

  “It’s already defined!” Sam yelled. “If you can’t see that, Lillie, you’re a fucking idiot!”

  Mike stood and started toward Sam. Only Scott’s urgent hand on Mike’s arm made him sit down again, glowering.

  Emily said, “No personal attacks, Sam. I mean it. This is too important to decide that way. Put out reasonable arguments or leave.”

  Lillie glanced at Emily in admiration. Emily did not return the look.

  Cord stood. “Clari’s and my son has all the life-saving stuff the pribir built into my genes. Dr. Wilkins says so. That’s good enough to survive a lot of climate dangers. I should know, it saved me during a sandstorm in the desert. Is Earth going to get worse than that? I don’t think so. We already have enough genemods for our descendants to survive.”

  He won’t look at me, Lillie thought. My son refuses to look at me. How had she and Cord changed sides? Once it had been she who feared the pribir and Cord who idealized them. Well, he’d met his ideal and changed his mind, and she was more afraid of the extinction of the human race than of the pribir. The pribir were bullies, tyrants even, short-sighted, selfish, uncaring. They were also the only antidote available to what humans themselves had done to their planet.

  She tried to say all this, but the crowd had gone past lengthy, reasoned speech. They shouted and interrupted and no amount of calm orders from DeWayne or Scott or even Jody could stop them. Finally, Sam screamed for a vote.

  “How many want to tell the pribir to leave us the hell alone?”

  Every hand went up except four: Lillie, Scott, Spring, and Julie. And that was that.

  Lillie, completely drained, left the big house to look again at her new grandson, sleeping peacefully beside Clari, unaware that the fate of his children and his children’s children had just been decided for him.

  Lillie wasn’t present when Scott told the pribir of the farm’s decision. He emerged from the interview gray-faced, saying only, “They say we’re crazy.”

  “But-“

  “I’m going to lie down now. Don’t pull at me, any of you. All they say is that we’re crazy.” He stumbled down the hill toward the lab. Lillie, watching this old man bent and defeated, pushed down the impulse to offer him her arm. Scott wouldn’t take it.

  Sajelle, standing beside Lillie, said, “What are you going to do now, Lillie?”

  Lillie knew it was a challenge: Are you going to go on opposing your own? Stirring up trouble? Sajelle waited, looking scarcely older than when they’d left the ship together fifteen years ago, although both she and Lillie were grandmothers. At twenty-nine, to Scott’s sixty-nine.

  Lillie said wearily, “I’m going to help prepare for Dolly’s wedding.”

  “Good,” Sajelle said.

  The whole farm was caught up in the preparation. The activity had a desperate edge, the gaiety not forced but brittle. Everyone wanted, needed this distraction, and yet no distraction would have been enough.

  Hannah’s children played her music cube over and over, and every time Lillie heard it she was back on the Flyer, happy and excited, putting on Madison’s make-up for that first “dance,” making her way shyly to the ship’s garden, dancing in Mike’s arms. But she didn’t ask Frank, Bruce, or Loni to stop playing the music. They were mourning their mother’s death, even as they prepared for Dolly’s wedding.

  Lupe and Kezia, the best needlewomen, took time away from babyminding to sew every bit of clean white cloth on the farm into a wedding dress for Dolly. Spring and Jody slaughtered and barbecued a cow. Sajelle and the kitchen crew made everything good possible out of the garden produce. Forage, and judicious amounts of the hoarded stuff that could not be replaced: sugar, baking powder, rice. There was even a wedding cake, decorated with fresh flowers that Carolina’s excited daughters picked by the creek.

  The wedding was held at dusk, in the cool space between the dying of the wind and the dying of the light. The children had dragged every chair on the farm to the newly swept area between the big house and the barn and set them in rows on either side of a dirt-packed aisle. At the barn end, a table was draped with flowers, bright with candles. Dolly would come out of the big house, preceded by two little girls carrying more flowers, and walk to the table, where Martin waited with DeWayne, who would recite the ceremony. “Dearly beloved… .”

  All of it off the Net, Lillie thought. Copied from countless old shows that had as much relevance to their lives now as the tribal rituals of Hottentots. And as for relevance to the lives they would be living ten years from now …

  She kept her mouth shut. This was what Dolly wanted. And apparently few others thought as she did. Scott, maybe. Emily. DeWayne. Maybe even Cord, although he would never say so. The others were caught up, or made themselves be caught up, in the artificial excitement. Even Senni had been smiling the last few days, as she changed endless diapers or tended the pots kept constantly boiling outside to launder them.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together …”

  Pam and Pete had not been invited.

  The night was lovely, clear and starry. Afterward everyone moved inside, escaping the insects, to eat and dance. No, Lillie thought, don’t play it! But they did. “Don’t matter none to me, never really did …”

  One of the small houses had been cleared out for Martin and Dolly’s “honeymoon.” No other couple had had such a thing … but no other couple of Dolly’s generation had come together slowly, voluntarily, free of pribir-engineered sex triggered at a pribir-chosen time and physiologically allowing no delay.

  The day after the wedding, neither Martin nor Dolly emerged from the house for breakfast. Lillie happened to catch Mike’s eyes. Something in her expression (What? She didn’t know how her face looked) made his gaze deepen. He didn’t look away. Lillie caught her breath. He was ready, then, enough over Hannah’s death. She smiled at him, and the smile made her feel fourteen again.

  Later. Soon.

  Dolly and Martin didn’t come to the big house for lunch, either.

  “Something’s wrong,” Senni said to DeWayne. “I left some breakfast for them outside the door, and nobody touched it. This isn’t just sex. I don’t believe it.”

  Senni knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she pushed it open. She screamed.

  Why screams? Lillie thought irritably. All she saw was that Martin lay asleep on the bed and Dolly wasn’t there. Dolly could have been in the latrine, for all Senni knew. Senni never considered the reasonable explanation.

  But Dolly wasn’t in the latrine, and Martin couldn’t be wakened.

  “He’s breathing normally,” Emily said, after examining him. “Nothing has been damaged. He’s drugged. Did anybody find Dolly?”

  “Jody and Spring are still looking.” But after an hour the news
had spread and everyone was looking. Martin did not wake up.

  Sam said grimly, “The fucking pribir have her. In their ship. And Martin’s knocked out with the same stuff we always were on the Flyer—you telling me you don’t remember?”

  Lillie, along with the others, remembered.

  She slipped away, to the pribir ship. It was undoubtedly impregnable, but that wouldn’t stop Sam and the others like him from assaulting it. Lillie wanted to get there first.

  She stood on the ship’s far side, where she couldn’t be seen from the big house. “Pam. This is Lillie. I need to talk to you.”

  Immediately Pam’s disembodied voice sounded through the ship wall. “What do you want, Lillie? I’m busy.”

  “Pam, you can’t implant engineered embryos in Dolly and pretend she got pregnant by Martin last night. I mean, you can physically do it. But everyone knows what happened. Senni found Martin before he revived and before you could get Dolly back beside him. Everybody else will be up here soon.”

  “So?” Pam said.

  “Scott will abort the fetuses. Or Emily will. Dolly herself will insist on it.”

  Silence. Lillie thought she’d lost, but then a door appeared in the ship and Pam erupted through it. “Abort? You mean she would destroy our embryos?”

  “Of course she would, Pam,” Lillie said. She struggled to keep control of her tone. “Scott told you we don’t want it.”

  “But we saw! With your lot! Once the babies are growing inside the females, they let them grow! And after they were born, they nurtured them anyway! We saw it right here on this farm! You and Bonnie and Emily and Julie and Sajelle, and in the next generation Felicity and Kella and Taneesha and Angie and — “

  “You didn’t see everybody from the ship, did you, Pam? Jessica aborted her triplets, fifteen years ago. So did Madison, and she died of the abortion.” All the memories back, after so many years not thinking of them. Tess’s story of Madison lying ashen and dead in an Amarillo basement, her legs caked with blood.