Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  I don’t really have any choice. Yet.

  A month later, I am on my way to Albany to bring back another dose of the counterbacteria, which the news calls “a reengineered prokaryote.” They’re careful not to call it a germ.

  I listen to the news every hour now, although Jack doesn’t like it. Or anything else I’m doing. I read, and I study, and now I know what prokaryotes are, and beta-lactamase, and plasmids. I know how bacteria fight to survive, evolving whatever they need to wipe out the competition and go on producing the next generation. That’s all that matters to bacteria. Survival by their own kind.

  And that’s what Randy Satler meant, too, when he said, “My work is what matters.” Triumph by his own kind. It’s what Ceci believes, too. And Jack.

  We bring in the reengineered prokaryotes in convoys of cars and trucks, because in some other places there’s been trouble. People who don’t understand, people who won’t understand. People whose family got a lot sicker than mine. The violence isn’t over, even though the CDC says the epidemic itself is starting to come under control.

  I’m early. The convoy hasn’t formed yet. We leave from a different place in town each time. This time we’re meeting behind the American Bowl. Sean is already there, with Sylvia. I take a short detour and drive, for the last time, to the Food Mart.

  The basket is gone, with all its letters to the dead man. So are the American flag and the peace sign. The crucifix is still there, but it’s broken in half. The latest flowers in the wine bottle are half wilted. Rain has muddied the Barbie doll’s dress, and her long blonde hair is a mess. Someone ripped up the anti-NRA stickers. The white candle on a foam plate and the pile of sea-shells are untouched.

  We are not bacteria. More than survival matters to us, or should. The individual past, which we can’t escape, no matter how hard we try. The individual present, with its unsafe choices. The individual future. And the collective one.

  I search in my pockets. Nothing but keys, money clip, lipstick, tissues, a blue marble I must have stuck in my pocket when I cleaned behind the couch. Jackie likes marbles.

  I put the marble beside the candle, check my gun, and drive to join the convoy for the city.

  HARD DRIVE

  The wedding vows tell us that marriages last “until death do us part,” but, as the following razor-edged shocker demonstrates, sometimes death just isn’t enough. . . .

  Born in Buffalo, New York, Nancy Kress now lives in Brockport, New York. She began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid-seventies, 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, and Brain Rose, and the collection Trinity and Other Stories. Her most recent books are the novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning story, Beggars in Spain, a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, and a new collection, The Aliens of Earth. She has also won a Nebula Award for her story “Out of All Them Bright Stars.”

  After the funeral, I went back with Maia to her apartment, even though she said she didn’t want any company. “No, don’t bother, Cal,” she said as my brother’s coffin was lowered into the ground. The funeral director gently cupped his hand under her elbow to turn her away. “I’ll be fine alone.”

  I gazed down at her, small and shivering in her black coat and veiled hat, and said, “Robert wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone.” I took her other arm. She didn’t protest, of course. Not at something Robert wanted.

  I could smell her perfume, something light and old-fashioned, as I helped her into the limo. Reluctantly, the funeral director relinquished her elbow. She sat quiet beside me, her hands folded on her lap. Behind her black veil, her pale skin gleamed, ghostly, in the half-light. Was she crying? I couldn’t tell.

  “Maia,” I said gently, “Robert went easily—short illness, no pain. The way he wanted to die.”

  She said, in a surprisingly strong voice, “Robert didn’t want to die at all. Ever.” She put up her veil. She wasn’t crying. “Robert was furious about dying.”

  “Well,” I said inanely. Furious. Of course, he would have been. Robert always got furious when he couldn’t control something, and death certainly qualified. I groped for something else to comfort Maia.

  “He had a long and productive life, Maia.”

  No response. But did her face look a little less set, less despairing?

  “Not that seventy-two is all that old, of course,” I said. Maia was twenty-nine. “But Robert had a genuinely full life. Think of

  his fame, his books, his honors, all those psychologists begging him to come and speak, everywhere. A full life.”

  I heard my own clichés. Maia looked out the limousine window.

  “And you, too, of course,” I added, unable to stop. “Since his marriage to you he was so happy, you gave him such a—”

  “Do you know why Robert married me?” Maia demanded, and it was a demand. She had turned from the window and was staring directly at me from those gold-bronze eyes. “Do you, Cal?”

  I hesitated. Of course I knew why Robert had married her. Everybody knew. Robert told them.

  Maia radiated sex. It wasn’t just the perfect pale skin, the glossy black hair braided into a chignon so heavy it tilted her head backward, the astonishing golden eyes. It wasn’t even her tiny, lush body, balanced perversely between adult curves and the delicate bones of a child. It was Maia herself. Something that rose from her pores, her hair follicles, like a fine mist that drenched you before you even knew it was raining.

  She said, “Sex doesn’t matter that much to you, Cal, does it? At all.” And now it was my turn to look away, out the window. But I didn’t wince. I was proud of that.

  We didn’t speak again until we were inside the apartment. Flowers everywhere, vases and baskets and urns of them. The smell hung heavy in the quiet air. Robert’s dog, a huge German shepherd named Helmutt, nuzzled her hand.

  “I have to walk him soon, poor animal,” Maia said. “Christ, let’s go into the study. At least there aren’t any flowers there.”

  There weren’t, but Robert’s latest book lay on his desk, half lying across his computer keyboard. Confronting Ourselves: The Real Truth About Sex and Power. It had been a best-seller. The dust jacket was the same gold-bronze as Maia’s eyes.

  “Martini?” Maia said, and didn’t wait for my answer. “I’m sorry this room is so dusty. Robert would never let the cleaning woman touch anything in here.”

  Helmutt, shut outside the study door, whimpered and scratched. Maia handed me a drink. She tossed her veiled hat on a marble table and sat beside me on the sofa. “To Robert. Wherever he is.”

  “To Robert.” I sipped from my glass; she drank down half of hers.

  “Cal, listen—I’m sorry about that crack I made in the car. About you not being interested in sex. It was . . . uncalled for.”

  “Why? It’s true.” It was not true. But it was my only cover.

  Maia’s eyes widened. “Really? But I always assumed . . . we always assumed . . .”

  Not accurate, but she didn’t know it. Robert had never assumed. He’d known the truth.

  “No, Maia, there’s no young man hidden away in my life somewhere. Nor is there one, or many, women unsuitable for introducing to you and Robert.”

  “But you must need—” She stopped, and sipped her drink. I didn’t answer. Of course Maia thought I must need. People judge others by themselves, and Maia needed all the time. You only had to watch her watch Robert to know that. And I had watched. For all three years she was the fifth Mrs. Carson-Jones I had watched. But I also remembered what Maia had been once, before she married my brother.

  “I’m sorry,” Maia said again. “I’m just getting in deeper, aren’t I? It’s just that you’re twenty years younger than Robert, and yet when you looked at me, I never even picked up any vibrations that . . . not that it’d have to be me that you . .
. oh, God, Maia, shut the fuck up! I’m sorry!”

  She got up and wandered distractedly around the room, touching things, not shutting up.

  “It’s just that, without Robert, I don’t know what I’m going to do. How I’m going to be.” She picked up a Faberge egg, put it down again. “Robert always made all the decisions, always was the one who . . . but it isn’t even that . . . I can’t just . . .” She poured a glass of water at the side table, left it there. “Even in bed, we . . . but I can’t let any of that determine whether . . . God, Maia, get a grip!” She picked up Robert’s book.

  I said soothingly, “I know, Maia. I know how you’ll miss him. I know how much you loved him.”

  She stared at me. ” ‘Love’ ? You thought I loved Robert?”

  Now it was my turn to stare: at her scornful tone, at the barely leashed strain in her tiny body, at the book in her hand. Something wild leaped in my chest. And, behind her, Robert’s computer came on.

  “Hello, Maia,” it said. “This is my ghost.”

  Robert’s voice. His face, on the screen. Maia glanced, startled, from the book in her hand to the keyboard where it had rested. Confronting Ourselves: The Real Truth About Sex and Power.

  “I know you miss me, my darling. And the ghost that I am now obviously can’t be everything to you that we once were to each other. But the important thing is that you’re not alone,

  Maia. I’m still here. Don’t be afraid, my darling—I know how terrified you are of being alone, of being abandoned—but you’re not alone. I’m still here for you.”

  Maia, golden eyes huge, gazed at the screen. Robert: tanned, fit, dressed in one of his Armani blazers and an open-necked shirt. He looked out at Maia with possessive fondness.

  “You can talk to me, darling. I’m not just a CD video. We can talk to each other. Go ahead, Maia.”

  She whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

  The computer light for the hard drive went on. Voice activated? Robert’s image said, in his own voice, “Because I can’t bear to leave you. Or have you left so alone.” As he spoke, Robert looked down, retrieving a pack of cigarettes from somewhere below screen level. It made it hard to see if his lip movements matched his actual words.

  Maia said, “You’re not a ghost. You’re a program!”

  Robert lit the cigarette, put it in his mouth, looked pensively off to one side, as if considering what Maia had said. It all hid the verbal synchronization, or lack of it.

  “Well, of course I am, darling. I’m not claiming the supernatural here. I’m just doing the best I can to see that you’re not alone, that you are taken care of, that you get everything you need. Everything. Maia, have you been rereading my book, as you promised? Ten pages every night?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Then last night you read this, didn’t you: ‘The erotic impulse is far more than merely the need for sex. It’s the underlying buoyancy that drives delight in all things, the wonder and sensuality that wells up in us when we stand in spring sunshine, or smell a thunderstorm, or suddenly feel, in all its dark mystery, our own heart beating in our chest, linking us with the self we were as unabashedly physical babies and the self we will become at the hour that heart ceases to beat. Eroticism drives all of this. As it drives us—when we let it—to the deepest expression of our true selves, which the erotic impulse both uncovers and glorifies.’ Did you read that last night, Maia?”

  “Yes, Robert,” she said, and she was no longer whispering. The stunned look had left her beautiful face. It showed now what it had shown for the last four years: the intense watching, watching, watching. The look of the disciple watching the master, careful not to miss that vital moment when the master let slip the secret that must be there. The one piece of wisdom that would make everything suddenly clear. On the computer screen, Robert smoked his cigarette, and dabbed at his face with a silk handkerchief, and moved slightly into shadow, his lip syncs blurred.

  And then the screen flickered, cigarette and handkerchief disappeared, and his words matched lip motions perfectly. A different digital sequence, I guessed. Maia, from the look on her face, was beyond noticing.

  Robert said, “I love you so much, darling. You are the first woman in my life who is so much more than she seems on the surface. There’s so much to you—layers and layers.” He smiled. “My little onion. Multilayered and pungent. Do you miss me?”

  “Oh, God, yes.”

  “I miss you, too. More than I can say. But words aren’t what’s most important, are they? We always knew that. Words don’t really express what’s deepest in human beings. . . .”

  His voice had changed. He stared out at her from the screen with an intensity, a sheer animal force, I had never personally witnessed in my brother. But, of course, I’d known it must be there. Measured by his success, his power, what he was. And what I was not.

  And Maia stared back at him with an answering intensity in those golden eyes.

  Then the computer did something: blinked—no, that’s not the right word. The hard drive lit up and the image of Robert thrust itself off the screen and into the air, a three-dimensional hologram that stopped just short of Maia’s body.

  “Maia, darling—take off your blouse. For me. Unbutton the top button . . . the next . . .”

  “I think,” Maia said thickly to me, “you’d better go.”

  “Maia, that isn’t Robert, it’s a—”

  “Please!” She fingered the top button on her blouse. Inches away, the translucent Robert leaned forward, and his hands moved to his shirt.

  I left. Helmutt wagged his tail forlornly as I passed through the living room, but I ignored him. I went to my club, and I drank until everything was a blur, and not even that blotted out the jealous pictures in my brain.

  It was almost a month before I went near her again. For the first two weeks, I stayed at work at the bank all day, at the club bar all evening, and awake too much of the night. After that, I spent my time in the library, reading about Eliza programs, voice activation, CD-ROM capabilities, the new technologies being developed by private cable-TV channels, holographic attributes of the 786 computers. It was slow going. My mind doesn’t move easily in these areas. But I kept at it, not trying to learn how these things were done, but only what could be done.

  Then I read my brother’s book.

  When Maia opened her apartment door, my chest tightened. She looked terrible. How could anyone so tiny lose that much weight that fast? Her skin, always pale, had a pasty look. She wore jeans and a man’s shirt with the third button missing. Through the gap, I glimpsed red lace. Her long hair hung greasily around her face, and her feet were bare. I tried not to picture what she’d been doing when I had leaned, over and over, on the bell.

  “Cal, hello. I wasn’t expecting . . .”

  “I know, I should have called. But I was on this side of town and suddenly realized I’d been neglecting you, so I thought I’d stop by. Here, Maia, I know you like these.”

  She took the Godiva chocolates without interest. “Thanks, Cal, that’s so sweet of you. But I’m afraid I’m in the middle of something, so maybe another time would be—”

  I’d practiced in front of the mirror. “Maia, I’m sorry to interrupt, really. But the truth is, I’m in some trouble at the bank, and I need to talk to someone who can understand. Please.”

  “But I don’t know anything about banking . . . oh, God, Cal, don’t cry! What is it, what’s wrong? Come in!”

  Robert had never been capable of appreciating what a kind person his sexual serf actually was.

  She led me toward his study. I grabbed her arm. “Maia, can we sit in the living room?”

  “You wouldn’t want to,” she said, and took my hand to lead me through it. I almost gagged. Helmutt lay listlessly on the Louis Quatorze sofa, and the air reeked with his shit, overlaid with sickeningly powerful deodorant sprays. Maia must not have walked him for two weeks, must not have left the apartment at all, must have just given up o
n everything except . . .

  “The cleaning woman quit,” Maia said. “I’m sorry, I can’t seem to . . . watch where you step. Come in here.”

  The study didn’t stink. The door was thick and well fitted, and the window was open slightly. Seven stories below, traffic hummed. Blankets and a pillow draped the sofa. A few dishes, most crusted with untouched food, rested on the Chippendale table beside mounds of frilly lingerie. A peach teddy, a sheer black peignoir, pairs of crotchless panties, something in white leather . . . I looked away.

  Maia seemed oblivious. She poured two drinks. “Now, tell me what’s wrong. It must be bad, for you to . . . did you lose your job at the bank? But you have your trust fund, don’t you? Is it . . . oh, God, did you break some banking law? Are the cops after you?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “The SEC. Securities and Exchange Commission.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to control something I had no business trying to control. Something it’s illegal to try to control.”

  “I don’t understand,” Maia said.

  Of course she didn’t. I counted on that. Carefully I laid out for her my fabricated story: insider trading, stock churning, just trying to control transactions for the good of my clients, who trusted me to act in their best interests. Maia listened intently. I finished by saying, “I could go to jail. Maia . . . I’m frightened.”

  I had her total attention. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “Yes. In fact, I’m supposed to see him this afternoon. But I can’t without . . . I just don’t believe there’s any hope. Not in this situation. The paper trail is too clear.”