Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “The hell I won’t.”

  Of course I didn’t. It was too far. But I reached something else.

  The light had begun to fail. I gambled on sticking to the coast rather than flying inland towards Kalrouan. Out of the gathering darkness loomed red cliffs. Piles of rubble clung to their sides, banked on terraces and ledges that had been folded by earthquakes and eroded by wind. From the sides of the cliffs twisted steel beams bristled like matted hair. “Cazie on. There’s a city—maybe not a city—just below me. We’re twenty- two minutes out of Tunis following the coast. Jack?”

  “Jack on. Too small to qualify.”

  “Team Leader on. Sorry, Cazie. Come on in.”

  “It doesn’t look too small!”

  “It’s too small.”

  “Maybe it’s in the supplementary d-base.” Nobody memorizes the supplementary database; it’s all those cities and towns that don’t qualify for points. Unless, of course, there’s a tie, or a field goal at endgame . . . Seventeen minutes left.

  “Team Leader on. We don’t have any reason to think we’re that close to a tie, Cazie. And if you earn a penalty by calling it wrong—”

  Nobody can call in advance how the computer will ref points. Base points are of course known, but there are too many variables altering base points. If there’s a flash of sunshine that the flyer registers as strong enough to count as a latitude clue, you lose points, even if you didn’t notice that the fucking clouds parted. There are penalties assessed against other teams that you don’t hear about until the quarter’s over. There are points added for plays in darkness, subtracted for nuclear- radiation clues above certain level, multiplied by a fractional constant for the number of cities already found during the quarter, factored for dozens of other things. But against all that, I knew. I did. We were close to a tie. You don’t play this game for eight years without developing a sixth sense, a feeling. A hunch.

  Sixteen minutes.

  “Cazie on. I got a hunch. I just do. Let me try for a touchdown.”

  “Team Leader on. Cazie, last time you . . .”

  “Larissa—please.”

  She didn’t say anything. Neither did Jack or Nikos. Last time I tried for an endgame touchdown I froze. Just froze, out there alone in the howling unbreathable desert with no walls, no life support, unprotected under that naked angry sky . . . We were disqualified. Disgraced. Odds on us lengthened to the moon, all four of us slept alone for a month. It took three flyers to get me in.

  “Please. I have the hunch.”

  “Team Leader on. Go.”

  Fifteen minutes.

  I slammed my fist onto the console code and struggled into my suit. The camera floated in for close-ups. Maria watched me through narrowed eyes. My ’plant said, She’s going to say it.

  “Cazie, it’s only a game. It’s not worth risking your life for a game.”

  I sealed the suit.

  “You’ll be exposed right at the edge of the ocean. God knows what toxins you’ll be exposed to, even through the suit. You know that. We went right over that dump down the coast, and that ocean looks terrible. When your field’s off, you’ll be completely exposed.”

  I reached for my helmet. She was talking her fears, not mine.

  “And you’ll be right there in the open. God, all that open space around you, desolate, winds blowing—completely exposed. Unprotected. The winds could blow you off the—”

  I sealed my helmet, shutting out her words.

  The airlock took one minute to empty and open. Eleven minutes. The second the door opened, I was out.

  The winds hit me so hard I cried out and fell against the flyer. The camera, buffeted by winds, was right behind me. I straightened and started away from the flyer. Almost immediately the fear was there, clawing at me from inside.

  Open. Unprotected. Poisoned. Life systems fouled, death in the air and soil and water . . . Twenty-eight years of conditioning. And the fact that my conscious mind knew it was conditioning didn’t help at all. Dead, foul, exposed, dead, dead, unprotected . . .

  I made myself keep walking. Nine minutes.

  The city—town, village—had been built down the cliff and, probably, along a coastal strip that was now all underwater. When they had built like that, often “richer” people lived higher up, in sturdier structures. Ahead of me the cliff turned in on itself a little, giving more shelter to whatever structures had been there. I made for the bend, running as fast as I could, the wind at my back, fighting the desire to scream. To fall. To freeze.

  Around the curve of rock were twisted steel beams, welded together and extending back inside the rock. I wrenched at them, which was stupid; they were huge, and nothing was going to break off a piece that could be carried into a flyer. There were chunks of concrete all around, but concrete doesn’t count. Below me, the poisoned ocean howled and thrashed.

  I worked my way between the steel beams. Whatever walls had been here had long since fallen down, the rubble blown away or washed away or just disintegrated. Dust blew all over everything; the steel and concrete were pitted by grit. It was the ugliest place I had ever seen. And it could shift under my feet any second. But between the steel beams a kind of cave, still roughly rectangular, led back into the cliff. The polluters had built into the earth before they destroyed it.

  Three minutes.

  I climbed over fallen rocks and rubble to get deeper into the cave house. For a moment I remembered the underground war on the moon and my breath stopped, but at the same moment I passed some kind of threshold and the sound from the horrible winds diminished abruptly. I kept on going.

  Two minutes.

  At the very back of the house I found it.

  There was a loose fall of rock from the ceiling in the most protected corner; smashed wood stuck out from under it. Some piece of furniture. I tugged at the rocks; when they wouldn’t move, I scrabbled with my hands behind them. Oh God don’t tear the suit, don’t let the ground shift or more rocks fall from the ceiling, don’t . . . my fingers closed on something smooth and hard.

  And whole.

  It was a keyboard, wedged between two rocks, slimy with some kind of mold but in one piece. I wiggled it free and started to run. For the first time in many minutes I became aware of the camera, floating along behind me. Not slowing, I held the keyboard in front of it, screaming words it couldn’t hear and I couldn’t remember. The winds hit me like a blow, but if I was clear enough of the cave for wind, I was clear enough for transmission.

  “Cazie on! Larissa? Fuck it—Larissa!’

  “Go!”

  “I got it! A touchdown! A whole! A touchdown!”

  “Touchdown by Team D!” Larissa screamed, on what I assumed to be all channels. “Touchdown!”

  Thirty seconds.

  The earth moved under me.

  I screamed. I was going to die. The game was over but I was going to die, exposed unprotected poisoned dead on the fucking earth . . .

  The quake was small. I wasn’t going to die. I swayed, sobbed, and began to fight my way back against the wind. Darkness was falling fast. But I could see the flyer, I was almost there, I had the whole, I was not going to freeze, and the treacherous earth was not going to take its revenge on me. On someone, almost certainly, eventually, but not on me.

  Touchdown.

  We won.

  The reffed score among three teams—not just two, but three—was close enough to make the endgame play legal. We got 865 points adjusted, and beat the closest team, C, by 53 points. My keyboard gave us Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, North Africa, from the supplementary database—a town no one had scored before.

  The party at the base was wild, with fans at home flashing messages on the screen so fast you could barely read them. Drink flowed. I got pounded on the back so often I was sore. I had five whispered bids for the traditional post-game activity, three of them from Team Leaders. High on victory, I chose Ari. He had always been the best lover I had, and we even, in drunken pleasure, talked about getting
together again back home. It was an astonishing party. Fans will talk about it for years.

  Team Leader A says they’ll put the keyboard in a museum in one of the orbitals, after the thing is cleaned up and detoxed. I don’t care what they do with it. It served its purpose.

  The moon war apparently was brief and deadly. No transmissions from any colony. They’re assumed all dead. But while I was downing my third victory drink and Larissa and I were laughing it up for the cameras, I got a great idea. All the moon colonies were underground, so it won’t take long for the surface marks to disappear: Collapse the energy domes and in a few years meteors will make the surface look pretty much like the rest of the moon. But the colonies will still be there underground, or their ruins will, detectable to sonar or maybe new heatseekers. As long as the heat lasts, anyway. Looking for them will be a tremendous challenge, a new kind of challenge, with new plays and feints and tactics and brand new rules.

  I can hardly wait.

  1991

  BEGGARS IN SPAIN

  With energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

  —Abraham Lincoln, to Major General Joseph Hooker, 1863

  1

  They sat stiffly on his antique Eames chairs, two people who didn’t want to be here, or one person who didn’t want to and one who resented the other’s reluctance. Dr. Ong had seen this before. Within two minutes he was sure: the woman was the silently furious resister. She would lose. The man would pay for it later, in little ways, for a long time.

  “I presume you’ve performed the necessary credit checks already,” Roger Camden said pleasantly, “so let’s get right on to details, shall we, Doctor?”

  “Certainly,” Ong said. “Why don’t we start by your telling me all the genetic modifications you’re interested in for the baby.”

  The woman shifted suddenly on her chair. She was in her late twenties—clearly a second wife—but already had a faded look, as if keeping up with Roger Camden was wearing her out. Ong could easily believe that. Mrs. Camden’s hair was brown, her eyes were brown, her skin had a brown tinge that might have been pretty if her cheeks had had any color. She wore a brown coat, neither fashionable nor cheap, and shoes that looked vaguely orthopedic. Ong glanced at his records for her name: Elizabeth. He would bet people forgot it often.

  Next to her, Roger Camden radiated nervous vitality, a man in late middle age whose bullet-shaped head did not match his careful haircut and Italian-silk business suit. Ong did not need to consult his file to recall anything about Camden. A caricature of the bullet-shaped head had been the leading graphic of yesterday’s on-line edition of the Wall Street Journal: Camden had led a major coup in cross-border data-atoll investment. Ong was not sure what cross-border data-atoll investment was.

  “A girl,” Elizabeth Camden said. Ong hadn’t expected her to speak first. Her voice was another surprise: upper-class British. “Blonde. Green eyes. Tall. Slender.”

  Ong smiled. “Appearance factors are the easiest to achieve, as I’m sure you already know. But all we can do about ‘slenderness’ is give her a genetic disposition in that direction. How you feed the child will naturally—”

  “Yes, yes,” Roger Camden said, “that’s obvious. Now: intelligence. High intelligence. And a sense of daring.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Camden—personality factors are not yet understood well enough to allow genet—”

  “Just testing,” Camden said, with a smile that Ong thought was probably supposed to be light-hearted.

  Elizabeth Camden said, “Musical ability.”

  “Again, Mrs. Camden, a disposition to be musical is all we can guarantee.”

  “Good enough,” Camden said. “The full array of corrections for any potential gene-linked health problem, of course.”

  “Of course,” Dr. Ong said. Neither client spoke. So far theirs was a fairly modest list, given Camden’s money; most clients had to be argued out of contradictory genetic tendencies, alteration overload, or unrealistic expectations. Ong waited. Tension prickled in the room like heat.

  “And,” Camden said, “no need to sleep.”

  Elizabeth Camden jerked her head sideways to look out the window.

  Ong picked a paper magnet off his desk. He made his voice pleasant. “May I ask how you learned whether that genetic-modification program exists?”

  Camden grinned. “You’re not denying it exists. I give you full credit for that, Doctor.”

  Ong held onto his temper. “May I ask how you learned whether the program exists?”

  Camden reached into an inner pocket of his suit. The silk crinkled and pulled; body and suit came from different social classes. Camden was, Ong remembered, a Yagaiist, a personal friend of Kenzo Yagai himself. Camden handed Ong hard copy: program specifications.

  “Don’t bother hunting down the security leak in your data banks, Doctor—you won’t find it. But if it’s any consolation, neither will anybody else. Now.” He leaned suddenly forward. His tone changed. “I know that you’ve created twenty children so far who don’t need to sleep at all. That so far nineteen are healthy, intelligent, and psychologically normal. In fact, better than normal—they’re all unusually precocious. The oldest is already four years old and can read in two languages. I know you’re thinking of offering this genetic modification on the open market in a few years. All I want is a chance to buy it for my daughter now. At whatever price you name.”

  Ong stood. “I can’t possibly discuss this with you unilaterally, Mr. Camden. Neither the theft of our data—”

  “Which wasn’t a theft—your system developed a spontaneous bubble regurgitation into a public gate, have a hell of a time proving otherwise—”

  “—nor the offer to purchase this particular genetic modification lies in my sole area of authority. Both have to be discussed with the Institute’s Board of Directors.”

  “By all means, by all means. When can I talk to them, too?”

  “You?”

  Camden, still seated, looked at him. It occurred to Ong that there were few men who could look so confident eighteen inches below eye level. “Certainly. I’d like the chance to present my offer to whoever has the actual authority to accept it. That’s only good business.”

  “This isn’t solely a business transaction, Mr. Camden.”

  “It isn’t solely pure scientific research, either,” Camden retorted. “You’re a for-profit corporation here. With certain tax breaks available only to firms meeting certain fair-practice laws.”

  For a minute Ong couldn’t think what Camden meant. “Fair-practice laws . . .”

  “. . . are designed to protect minorities who are suppliers. I know, it hasn’t ever been tested in the case of customers, except for red-lining in Y-energy installations. But it could be tested, Doctor Ong. Minorities are entitled to the same product offerings as non-minorities. I know the Institute would not welcome a court case, Doctor. None of your twenty genetic beta-test families are either Black or Jewish.”

  “A court . . . but you’re not Black or Jewish!”

  “I’m a different minority. Polish-American. The name was Kaminsky.” Camden finally stood. And smiled warmly. “Look, it is preposterous. You know that, and I know that, and we both know what a grand time journalists would have with it anyway. And you know that I don’t want to sue you with a preposterous case, just to use the threat of premature and adverse publicity to get what I want. I don’t want to make threats at all, believe me I don’t. I just want this marvelous advancement you’ve come up with for my daughter.” His face changed, to an expression Ong wouldn’t have believed possible on those particular features: wistfulness. “Doctor—do you know how much more I could have accomplished if I hadn’t had to sleep all my life?”

  Elizabeth Camden said harshly, “You hardly sleep now.”

  Camden looked down at her as if he had forgotten she was there. “Well, no, my dear, not now. But when I was young . . . college, I might have been able to finish college and still
support . . . well. None of that matters now. What matters, Doctor, is that you and I and your board come to an agreement.”

  “Mr. Camden, please leave my office now.”

  “You mean before you lose your temper at my presumptuousness? You wouldn’t be the first. I’ll expect to have a meeting set up by the end of next week, whenever and wherever you say, of course. Just let my personal secretary, Diane Clavers, know the details. Anytime that’s best for you.”

  Ong did not accompany them to the door. Pressure throbbed behind his temples. In the doorway Elizabeth Camden turned. “What happened to the twentieth one?”

  “What?”

  “The twentieth baby. My husband said nineteen of them are healthy and normal. What happened to the twentieth?”

  The pressure grew stronger, hotter. Ong knew that he should not answer; that Camden probably already knew the answer even if his wife didn’t; that he, Ong, was going to answer anyway; that he would regret the lack of self-control, bitterly, later.

  “The twentieth baby is dead. His parents turned out to be unstable. They separated during the pregnancy, and his mother could not bear the twenty-four-hour crying of a baby who never sleeps.”

  Elizabeth Camden’s eyes widened. “She killed it?”

  “By mistake,” Camden said shortly. “Shook the little thing too hard.” He frowned at Ong. “Nurses, Doctor. In shifts. You should have picked only parents wealthy enough to afford nurses in shifts.”

  “That’s horrible!” Mrs. Camden burst out, and Ong could not tell if she meant the child’s death, the lack of nurses, or the Institute’s carelessness. Ong closed his eyes.

  When they had gone, he took ten milligrams of cyclobenzaprine-III. For his back—it was solely for his back. The old injury hurting again. Afterward he stood for a long time at the window, still holding the paper magnet, feeling the pressure recede from his temples, feeling himself calm down. Below him Lake Michigan lapped peacefully at the shore; the police had driven away the homeless in another raid just last night, and they hadn’t yet had time to return. Only their debris remained, thrown into the bushes of the lakeshore park: tattered blankets, newspapers, plastic bags like pathetic trampled standards. It was illegal to sleep in the park, illegal to enter it without a resident’s permit, illegal to be homeless and without a residence. As Ong watched, uniformed park attendants began methodically spearing newspapers and shoving them into clean self-propelled receptacles.