Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Here comes the second one . . . finally . . . look, there’s the head . . . another male!”

  Daddy puffs as hard as Leisha. He’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him. It looks like I’m the only one who thinks about Mama, dying right while she was doing this same thing. Two more pups emerge, and they’re both males, too. At least the Arrowgene scientist hasn’t lied so far. All the pups are big, maybe part Doberman or even Great Dane. It’s hard to tell, so young.

  One more pup squeezes out, and then the afterbirth. Leisha’s almost too tired to eat it. Two pups are brown and black, two are black, and one is a sort of gray color like spoiled yogurt. Their eyes are all closed.

  Donna cries, “Aren’t they beautiful!”

  “They look like slimy rats,” I say. She gives me a look. Leisha whimpers and shifts on the spoiled blanket.

  Donna says, “Wait till Precious sees them!”

  “Now, princess, we can’t let Precious get too attached to these pups,” Daddy says. “These here aren’t our pets.”

  He looks at Donna and me, head tipped to one side like he’s making a critical judgment. But his eyes are shining.

  “These here are our fortune.”

  We don’t have a terminal. We did, once, but Daddy sold it after Mama died. He did a lot of things then that didn’t make too much sense. His grief ran hard but not too long. Then he got interested in life again. I wouldn’t want him any different—at least, most of the time.

  The library at Kellsville has a public terminal. Once a month a good friend of Daddy’s, Denny Patterson, takes one of us girls down the mountain to town to shop. Only two people can fit in the cab of Denny’s truck. This month it’s my turn.

  PROPERTY OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA comes up when I log on to the Net. REQUEST, PLEASE. A poor county like ours doesn’t get voice-interacts.

  I can use the Net pretty well. I finished all the high-school software by fifteen and so I was legally done, which is lucky because somebody had to look after Precious. Donna never did finish. I type my request in the only format the public terminals accept:

  l­­ PERSONAL SEARCH

  l WANTED: BASIC OVERVIEW, MOST RECENT

  l LENGTH: 2,000 WORDS

  l LEVEL: COLLEGE FRESHMAN

  l SUBJECT: SLEEPLESSNESS IN DOGS

  I read the answer off the screen. Printouts cost money. It doesn’t tell me much, mostly that research on sleeplessness in dogs came after sleeplessness in people, because monkeys had served as both the basic lab animals and the primary beta-test subjects. What is known about sleeplessness in canines “indicates that its mechanisms are similar to those in humans. The same side effects were reported as those observed in sleepless people—sleepless dogs were physiologically calmer, ate more, never slept, displayed increased resistance to disease.” The dogs used in the research had been various breeds, but mostly small because it was easier to house and exercise them. All had been destroyed. There is no FDA approval for genemod canine sleeplessness and it isn’t legal to take the sleepless dogs out of laboratories. There’s been no applications to fund the FDA approval process, since “no one has identified significant market opportunity.”

  Nothing I don’t already know. Nothing I want to know. I type another request.

  l PERSONAL SEARCH

  l WANTED: BASIC INFORMATION, MOST RECENT

  l LENGTH: 2,000 WORDS

  l LEVEL: COLLEGE FRESHMAN

  l SUBJECT: MARKET OPPORTUNITY FOR GUARD DOGS IN PENNSYLVANIA

  The terminal searches the Net a longish time. NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE. Great. What good is it?

  I pick up our food credits at the government office. At the store I spend a long time choosing. If I’m careful, I’ll have enough credits left to get new overalls for Precious, the synth kind that dirt slides off of, and that doesn’t ever tear. I also try to choose foodstuffs that will stretch: rice, oatmeal, soy, synthmeat. Trouble is, dogs like all those things, too.

  The same side effects were reported as those observed in sleepless people—sleepless dogs were physiologically calmer, ate more, never slept, displayed increased resistance to disease. “Ate more”: that was the problem. I figure out where to hide some of the food so there will actually be some left for us by the end of the month. No matter what Daddy and Donna think, Precious comes before Leisha and her pups. Dogs aren’t people.

  They’re cute, though. I have to admit that. Their names, until they’re sold anyway, are Tony, Kevin, Richard, Jack, and Bill. Donna named them after the sleepless she sees on the news. Tony Indivino, the loudmouth who thinks Sleepless should live in their own separate guarded city, away from norms. Kevin Baker, the first Sleepless ever engineered. Richard Keller, Leisha Camden’s boyfriend. Jack Bellingham, a rich investor. William Thaine, a supersmart Harvard lawyer. I imagine how these people might feel if they knew illegal mutts are named after them.

  By the time August turns into a hot September, the pups are huge. They chew everything in the house, day and night. Finally Daddy moves them outside during the day, to an empty pen. Donna starts to train them. She’s very good at animal training. But the pups don’t seem to learn.

  “I don’t get it,” she says to me. “They’re smart enough. Watch them remember where I hide food. And they aren’t overdistractible, not like some I’ve trained.”

  “Well, then, what is it?” I say, but the truth is I don’t really care. I’m losing faith in BENSON’S GENEMOD GUARD DOGS as a way of making all the difference in the world. It’s near the end of the month, and there’s only a little rice and canned beans left, and Precious is teething. She fusses all the time. She needs the medicine you put on baby’s gums, and a regular bed now that she’s outgrowing her crib, and new clothes. I sit in the yard, in the shade of a sugar maple, feeling out of sorts. The air is hot and heavy. A thunderstorm is brewing, but there’s no guarantee it’ll relieve either the heat or the humidity. Mosquitoes whine everywhere. I hold Precious while she twists to get down into a patch of sumac she’s allergic to, and I think that I don’t care if Tony, Kevin, Richard, Jack, and Bill never learn to guard anything.

  Donna says, “I just don’t know what it is about them pups. They’re smart enough to learn.”

  “You said that.” Precious rocks and slobbers against my shoulder: hyenh hyenh hyenh.

  “They just don’t obey. They just don’t seem like no dogs I trained before. They’re more like . . . like cats.”

  “Donna, that doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know it don’t. But maybe that cute little scientist used cat genes somewhere in there.”

  “That’s not possible. You can’t just mix—Precious, stop it! Let go!” She’s pulling on my hair, hard. I reach up and try to get my hair loose from her little fist. Precious lets out a wail and bites my shoulder.

  I jerk her loose and shake her. She screams for real, screwing up her eyes and turning red. It’s five whole minutes before I can get her calmed down, and when I do I turn on Donna.

  “I don’t care if those dogs are acting like cats or like elephants. All I care about is they aren’t bringing in any money. We need all kinds of things just to live, and we can’t afford them. The bathroom roof leaks worse than ever. The house is full of dog poop because Daddy won’t let the pups out at night in case anybody realizes they never sleep. Who, for fucking sake? Except for Denny and his last girlfriend, we haven’t seen another human being in a month!”

  Donna stares. “What’s got into you, Carol Ann? You used to be so patient and helpful but—”

  “I’m sick of being patient and helpful! I’m sick of dogs pooping and barking and chewing things up twenty-four hours a day!”

  “—since you turned eighteen you just turned into a fucking bitch.”

  Eighteen. I had a birthday last week. I forgot all about it. And so, until this very minute I’d bet, did everybody else. Except to tell me that it’s turned me into a bitch.

  I shove Precious at Donna, so hard that Precious starts crying again. Donna loo
ks at me with wide, hurt eyes, innocent as flowers. I hate her. I hate all of it, the dogs and the poorness and my birthday and everything else. Nothing works right, and all I want to do is get away from all of it. I stumble across the yard, so worked up I can’t see straight, and so I miss the aircar land. I don’t even know it’s there until Donna says soft, like it’s a prayer, “O fucking crazy hellfire god.”

  I’ve never seen an aircar for real, only on vid. This one is small, built for two people. Maybe only one. The Y-energy cones on the sleek sides are painted a different shade of gray from the body. In our yard it looks like a bullet on a torn-up and rotted body. A man gets out, and Donna gasps. “Tony Indivino!”

  It really is. Even I recognize him from vid. He’s medium height, a little stocky, not particularly good-looking. His family couldn’t afford any genemods except sleeplessness, according to the vid. He starts across the yard toward us, and Donna and I stand up. She thrusts Precious back at me and smoothes her skirt. Precious looks wide-eyed at the car that just dropped out of the sky, and all at once she stops fussing. There, that’s what we need: an aircar to land every five minutes to distract her from her aching teeth.

  “Hello. May I please speak with David Benson?”

  Donna smiles, and I see his reaction in his eyes. He doesn’t like reacting, but he reacts anyway. A Sleepless man is still a male.

  “David Benson’s not here right this minute. I’m his daughter, Donna. Can I help you, Mr. Indivino?”

  I say, “You’re here because of the dogs.”

  “Carol Ann!” Donna says. “Where’re your manners?”

  Tony Indivino hesitates, but only for a second. “That’s right. I want to talk to your father about the dogs.”

  I push. “You want to buy one.”

  He looks at me then, hard. His eyes are gray, with little flecks of brown in them. I say again, just so there’s no mistake. “You want to buy a dog. That’s the only reason my father talks about them to anybody.”

  He finally smiles, amused. “Okay. Sure. I want to buy one.”

  Donna cries, “But they aren’t even trained yet!”

  She doesn’t have a glimmer. Tony Indivino needs a trained guard dog like he needs a third foot. The Sleepless must have all kinds of Y-shields, bodyguards, secret weapons to protect themselves. Nobody’s going to hurt Tony Indivino. He’ll buy this dog so his scientist buddies can take it apart in some lab, see how it’s different from other dogs. All I care is how much he’ll pay for it. Maybe I can get a grand out of him. He’s one of the “poor” Sleepless (yeah, right), but his girlfriend is supposed to be Jennifer Sharifi. The daughter of an Arab oil prince and an American holo star, she’s the richest woman in the entire world.

  Maybe two grand. A bed for Precious, a terminal, some new clothes . . .

  Donna says, “Well, I suppose you could buy the dog now and then come back for it later, after I done finish its guard training.” She likes this idea.

  Indivino says, “How is the training going?”

  “Fine,” I say, real fast. I’m not going to give him an excuse to pay less. I stare at Donna, who finally nods.

  “Really?” Indivino says.

  “Why wouldn’t the training go good?” Donna says.

  His voice turns serious. “No specific reason that I know of. But that’s what I wanted to talk to your father about.”

  “Then you can talk to me. Daddy’s gone for two-three days, hunting in the mountains,” I lie. “But I can repeat to him any information you like.”

  He doesn’t even hesitate. Probably Sleepless are used to young people accepting responsibility, even better than the adults around them. The oldest Sleepless is only twenty-seven.

  He says, “What I wanted to tell your father isn’t hard data. It’s more a principle, but a very important one. It’s this: advanced biologic systems are very complex. They’re past that critical point beyond which behavior is complicated but predictable, and into the realm where behavior becomes chaotic, and more sensitive to small differences in initial conditions. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.” Donna says, and smiles.

  “Sort of,” I say, because I had this in the high-school software. He simplifies it for me anyway.

  “It means that genemod changes that worked one way in humans might not work the same way in dogs. Or they might work the same way in most dogs but not in your dogs. Or in some of your dogs but not in others from the same litter but with different genetic makeup, or different in vitro conditions, or different environmental conditions.”

  Donna says, “But our dogs are sleepless just exactly like you sleepless humans are, Mr. Indivino. Come see!”

  He looks at me. I say, “It means we should be careful.”

  “Yes,” he says, “there isn’t that much research on canine sleeplessness to guide you.”

  No applications to fund the FDA approval process, since no one has identified significant market opportunity.

  But, come to think of it, how had Tony Indivino heard of this particular market opportunity? Daddy isn’t advertising yet. He doesn’t have anything to advertise with: no terminal, no money. I feel a prickle on my spine, and Precious squirms in my arms. I put her down. She toddles toward the aircar.

  Donna’s saying, “You’ve got to come choose your pup, Mr. Indivino. Wait till you see them, they’re so cute you—”

  “How’d you hear about us?” I demand. “Who told you?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Are you going to report Daddy to the law?” Amazingly, this only occurs to me now. Sleepless generally keep inside the law, the vids all say. Maybe there’s too many eyes on them not to.

  “No, I’m not going to report to the law. I’m here only to warn you to be careful.”

  “Why? What’s it to you if our business fails?” I almost say “like our others,” but I catch myself in time. I don’t want him feeling sorry for us.

  “Your business is nothing to me personally,” he says coolly. “But we Sleepless like to keep an eye on genetic research. I’m sure you can see why. Even underground research. How we do that really isn’t your concern. I’m here only to tell you what I have. And maybe a little out of curiosity.”

  Donna says brightly, “Then you’re curious to see the pups and choose your very own!”

  She takes him by the hand and leads him away, toward the house. Precious is trying to climb the smooth, rounded side of the aircar, which of course she can’t do. In a minute she’ll be on her little ass in the dirt. I start toward her and leave Tony Indivino to Donna and the sleepless pups. It doesn’t matter which pup he picks, or if he ever actually comes back for it. It only matters that he pays before he leaves.

  Which he does. Two and a half thousand dollars, and in certified preloaded credit chips, not just transfers. I hold the chips in my hand while Donna dances and cheers around the kitchen, setting the dogs to barking, and Precious stands up in her high chair and crows. It’s chaos. For once, I don’t care. This money is going to make all the difference in the world to us.

  Three weeks later, everything ends.

  “Come look at this here,” Daddy calls through the screen door. He’s sitting at the kitchen table in front of our new terminal, researching what he calls “ad futures” on the Subnet. His friend Denny, with the truck, showed him how. Daddy won’t tell me how Denny learned, or what Denny’s buying or selling that he needs underground ads. But I know the Subnet’s not easy to ride. It isn’t all that hard to log onto, but after that it has a way of melting away unless you know all the key underground code words and procedures, which keep changing all the time. “The shadow economy,” vidnews calls it, or sometimes “the ghost market.” Supposedly you can get anything there, if you know how.

  “Carol Ann!” Daddy calls again, louder. “Come see this.”

  “I’m busy,” I call back from the yard. I’m watching Precious dig a hole with a kitchen fork. She sits in the slanting fall sunshine, covered with sweat and dirt
, happy as day. Somewhere in the woods I hear Donna yelling at dogs. They still aren’t training properly. She’s having a terrible time with them.

  “I said come here, Carol Ann, and I mean come here!” Daddy yells. Reluctantly I get myself up and go into the house.

  It’s funny about getting a little money. All last winter and spring, when I was scrounging for rice and beans enough for us, and Daddy was working his ass off to get the money to buy the genemod embryos implanted in Leisha, and Donna had just one dress—all that long cold winter everybody was in a good mood. Sunny, hopeful. We were nice to each other. But since we got Tony Indivino’s credit chips, everybody’s been tense and snappy. Maybe I’m always that way, but Donna and Daddy aren’t. Or weren’t.

  The stakes are higher now. Daddy has to figure out the right places to buy ads: Subnet sites that will be profitable, as well as safe from the law. We can’t afford to make mistakes. And the news is full of the feds closing illegal genemod labs, and the pups won’t listen to Donna unless she’s right there with a piece of meat—that’s what she meant when she said they’re like cats, they only do what you want them to if you’re standing right there with a prize or a poke. Everybody’s nervous.

  For once, we have something to lose.

  “Tell me what this means,” Daddy growls, and I bend over the screen. It’s an FDA recommendation to Congress about making genemod animals. The sentences are long and difficult, with a lot of scientific words I don’t understand.

  “It’s about what a new law should allow in genetic engineering,” I say. “The summary says ‘No genemods that alter external appearance or basic internal functioning such that a creature deviates significantly from other members of not only its genus and species but also its breed.’ ”

  “I can read!” Daddy snaps. After a minute he says, “I’m sorry, Carol Ann. But I need to know what every bit of it means. You explain it. One sentence at a time.”