Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “I brought some veggies,” Danilo said. “Did you know you have an organic farmer just the other side of town?”

  “No,” Lisa said. “I don’t shop around much.”

  “Good stuff. No pesticides, no fertilizers. I thought I’d make a salad. Do you like salad, Carlo?”

  “Yes!” said Carlo, who liked everything.

  “I got some peaches and cherries, too.”

  Lisa’s mouth filled with sweet water. She made herself say, “Thank you, Danilo. But you should knock, you know. It’s good manners.” She looked pointedly at Carlo.

  “You’re right. I will. Carlo, watch this.”

  Danilo tossed cherries in the air, caught them in his mouth, mimed exaggerated satisfaction. Carlo laughed, and so Danilo hammed it up more, until the little boy was whooping with laughter. “Now Carlo’s turn.”

  “Pit them first, Danny,” Lisa said quickly. He had always swallowed the cherry pits. Oh God, Danny . . . it had just slipped out.

  Danilo played with Carlo all evening. It wasn’t until Carlo was in bed that Lisa could throw Danilo out.

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Do what?” he said.

  “Get Carlo used to you, enjoying you, then disappear again.”

  “Isn’t that what ‘uncles’ do?” Danilo said, and they were facing each other, bristling like cats.

  “Danilo, what are you really doing here? I looked up EarthAction on the web. They’re suspected in half a dozen environmental bombings. A pesticide factory in Mexico, a supermarket in Germany that refused to remove genetically modified foods from its shelves, a Monsanto distributor in South Africa, a whaling operation in Japan.”

  “Nothing proven whatsoever,” Danilo said.

  “Mostly because you haven’t hit anything in the United States. God, Danilo, a supermarket?”

  “Do you know how dangerous those genetically modified foods are? The growers use two to five times the pesticides that regular farmers use. Worse, nobody knows the long-term effects of introducing organisms into the environment that didn’t develop there naturally. We could be looking at global disaster down the road, just so the agri-industrial complex can boost its profits now.”

  “You used to believe that violence was descending to the level of the enemy!”

  “And all that peaceful confrontation failed, didn’t it? Did you breast-feed Carlo, Lisa? You probably had toxic organochlorines in your breast milk. Do you read the newspaper when you’re not in that swampy ivory tower of yours? Did you read about the fish depletion on the Grand Banks because of overfishing?

  The drought in Africa because of climate shifts due to the actions of industrial countries? The destruction of sustainable, diverse agriculture because of one-crop genetically engineered planting with God-knows-what side effects? The ninety-six people in Manila—” He stopped, breathing hard.

  Lisa said quietly, “What about the people in Manila, Danilo? Which people?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “It was the garbage dump, wasn’t it? I saw it on the news. A dump collapsed outside Manila, burying the shanties of people who lived by scavenging in the garbage.”

  “Men, women, children,” Danilo said. “Buried under huge mounds of rotten garbage. Burned when fires broke out from the pathetic makeshift stoves they used to cook their food in the shanties. Cooking food there. Rescue people couldn’t even get the bodies out right away because of the stench.”

  Lisa waited.

  “My family owns that dump, Lisa. Just like they own most of that Manila suburb.”

  “Danilo, you—”

  “Come out of your bog once in a while and see what’s going on with the planet. Which we’re not going to have indefinitely unless somebody gets through to the people exploiting it for profit.”

  He was right, she knew he was right. And yet all she could think was, He talks like a propaganda leaflet.

  Was Danilo still in there somewhere, a real person?

  “See you,” Danilo said, picking up his knapsack. “Tell Carlo I said good-bye.”

  Lisa was the first one in at Kenton the next day, a miracle. She couldn’t sleep, and when she saw Mrs. Belling’s light go on at 4:00 A.M., she took a chance and asked her if she could take Carlo this early. An emergency at work, Lisa babbled, they’d just phoned, she hated to ask, wouldn’t let it happen again . . .

  Mrs. Belling, blinking in either sleep or surprise, agreed. Lisa carried the unconscious Carlo next door. In Mrs. Belling’s shabby, comfortable kitchen she noted on the counter a jar of peanut butter, plastic food containers, a receipt for dry cleaning. Genetically modified foodstuffs, persistent organic pollutants, environmental toxins. That’s what Danilo would have said.

  Screw Danilo.

  The lab was cool and sweet-smelling, a window open to the moist night air. Lisa shrugged off her irritation at once again being ribbed by the guard. She pulled out her notes on analyses of snaker fecal matter.

  Thrashing sounded from the snaker cage.

  A snaker sat in a shallow pool of water smack up against the mesh wall. It ignored Lisa as she approached. Again it thrashed with the back half of its long body. Something was emerging. The snaker was giving birth.

  Unable to believe her luck, Lisa grabbed a camcorder. She put it right against the mesh, hoping the fine carbon-filament netting wouldn’t interfere too much with the picture. The snaker paid no attention. It was totally absorbed in the excruciating pushing process of mammalian birth, supplemented by a snake-like thrashing.

  Finally, something emerged. Lisa gasped and almost dropped the camera.

  Not possible.

  A brief rest, and the snaker resumed pushing. Lisa could barely hold the camera steady. The offspring looked nothing like the parent, a phenomenon associated with reptiles and amphibians and insects.

  Tadpoles, larvae. Egg layers. But the snaker was a warm-blooded pseudo-mammal, and its offspring was . . .

  Its offspring looked orders more complex than the parent. It had long, far more developed legs, with knee joints and toes. Toes. It had a shorter body. It had . . . not possible.

  It had a prehensile tail.

  This didn’t happen. Offspring were not more evolutionarily advanced than their parents, not like this. This looked like an entirely different animal. No, that wasn’t true, either. It looked like a plausible development from this animal but several million years up the evolutionary ladder.

  Not possible.

  But there it was, a second one, emerging from the snaker. Who then gave a last enormous thrash, curled up, and went to sleep. Apparently completely certain that her two offspring could fend for themselves.

  Which they could. They leaned over and both gently bit their mother on the head. A few minutes later, they began to eat her.

  “I have a conjecture,” Paul said.

  It came after a long silence. The few scientists who had arrived by 5:30 A.M. looked at Lisa’s video, gasped in disbelief, looked again, stampeded to the mesh cage, where there was nothing to see. The infant snakers. . .no, you couldn’t call them that, they were clearly something else besides snakers. . .had disappeared into the cage’s lush interior. For the first time, Lisa regretted the large, ecologically correct environments lab animals got at Kenton.

  Paul didn’t respect the philosophy behind this, not this time. He removed the top and beat the swamp reeds and fished under the lily pads and pond scum until one of the offspring was found.

  Unceremoniously he hoisted it with a net into a small bench cage, and everyone had gasped a second time.

  “I have a conjecture,” Paul repeated. Lisa recognized the reluctance of a scientist to make a fool of himself, coupled with the honesty that was going to let him do so. “I think they were genetically engineered to do this. The entire genome—maybe several genomes—exists in the one-celled organisms released from the spacecraft. In fact, one-celled organisms may have been the only things released from the spacecraft. They had the best chance
of survival in many conditions, and could subsist on the widest array of chemicals available.

  “The genome is in so many pieces in the alien cells because it’s so huge. It contains multiple possible evolutionary paths for future organisms, depending on what environment the craft finds itself in. And that same environment triggers which genes kick in for each subsequent generation, advancing as fast up the evolutionary ladder as biology and environment permit.”

  Immediately objections broke out, some of them vehement. “I didn’t say it was a polished theory,” Paul finally said angrily. Lisa had never heard him get angry. “I said it was a conjecture!”

  More objections, more arguments. Someone else came in—Dr. Clark—and someone else explained to her what had happened. The birth film was run again. People ran back and forth from the bench cage containing the new creature, the totally impossible creature, which had gone to sleep. The NASA rep arrived, looking stunned as he listened to the scientists.

  Amid the din, Lisa sat quietly. I believe Paul, she thought. Not because the theory was tight, or well-supported, or inevitably logical. She believed it, she realized, because if she were going to send terrestrial life to the stars, that’s the way she would do it. The way that respected the unknown ecologies so abruptly intruded upon. The way with the largest possibility of success.

  The next weeks filled with frenzied work. Lab staff and visiting scientists had divided into camps. Only the tremendous excitement of the discovery itself kept the arguing from deteriorating into turf wars. And sometimes, Lisa observed wryly, not even that. Kenton’s previous major concern, controlling the invasion of loosestrife into the wetlands, was forgotten. The purple Eurasian weed begat and burgeoned.

  Lisa stayed at the lab all she could. Unlike some people, she couldn’t physically move in. Paul and Stephanie spent most nights in their offices. One of the CDC scientists, Lisa suspected, was sleeping on the very hard sofa in the break room. She herself drew more money from her small, precious hoard to pay Mrs. Belling as much overtime as Lisa could conscionably allow herself away from Carlo. The child grew cranky with missing her, and Mrs. Belling grew stiffer as Lisa picked him up later and later, but she couldn’t stay away from Kenton.

  They found more of the new creatures—“post-snakers”—in the Preserve.

  The geneticists isolated a few specific sections of the alien genetic material responsible for producing a few specific proteins. A tentative but definite beginning on mapping the genome.

  Technicians installed heavy encryption programs for all data flowing between Kenton, Washington, the CDC, and the university research centers involved in the discovery.

  A post-snaker was painstakingly dissected. Internal organs and systems were logical but startlingly advanced versions of its parents’.

  Paul and Hal got into a public fight—it was not an argument, it was a fight—on the missing links between the worms they’d found in the Preserve and the snakers. From worm to pseudo-mammal with nothing in between? Impossible, said Hal. Irresponsible sensationalism.

  The missing forms disappeared because they were no longer needed, Paul said. Just as the eaten maternal snakers were no longer needed after the snaker population had reached a certain level. They’d accomplished their purpose, so they stopped being produced.

  Evolution doesn’t work that way, Hal retorted. Species don’t disappear because they’re not “needed”—they disappear because their habitat changes, and not always then. We still have primitive, clumsy birds like hoatzins along with superb flyers like gulls and hawks. We still have alternate-branch primates even though man exists. We still have crocodiles, for God’s sake, that were around in the Triassic. National Enquirer science is no science at all.

  This isn’t Terran evolution, Paul replied coldly, and the two men parted in anger.

  Lisa watched the fight with sorrow, mingled with impatience. Why were these intelligent, capable men wasting time on turf wars? The greatest discovery in the history of the human race, and they used it to vent long-standing acrimonies, which was how it seemed to her. But maybe she wasn’t seeing it too clearly. She was so tired. Being part of history might be exciting, but it was also so exhausting she was often afraid she’d fall asleep at the wheel driving home.

  And then one night, as she staggered in past midnight with the sleeping Carlo a dead weight in her arms, Danilo was back.

  “Lissy,” he said somberly, and she couldn’t summon the energy to tell him he wasn’t allowed to call her that.

  “Leave, Danilo.”

  “I’m going. This is a two-minute visit. Do you often work at night like this?”

  “If I have to.” She dumped Carlo in his bed, covered him, and closed the bedroom door.

  Danilo said, “And do you often get to work as early as you did today? I was here at five and you were already gone.”

  “What were you doing here at five? Danilo, leave. I’m exhausted.” She yawned.

  “I can see that. Do you often get to work as early as you did today?”

  This time she heard the casualness in his voice. Too casual. Her senses sharpened. “Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He picked up his ever-present knapsack and headed for the door. “Lissy, you work too hard. Don’t go into work so early.”

  “The hell with you. How else do you suppose work gets done, Danilo? Not that you’d know.”

  He didn’t change expression. “I know you hate me.”

  “No, Danilo. I don’t hate you. I can even admire what you’re doing, or at least I could when you were with organizations like Greenpeace. It’s necessary, important work. But it’s not supposed to be an excuse to avoid normal human responsibilities such as your own child, and then even expect to get credit for doing that.”

  “I wanted you to put him in an institution, Lisa.”

  “And I chose not to. Is that it, is the problem that Carlo’s deformed? That the healthy Danilo Aglipay, stalwart macho crusader, has a son who will never walk or feed himself? Do you think that my keeping him against your wishes absolves you of responsibility? Whether you approve or not, the kid is here, and he’s yours, and you’d rather be Richard the Lion Heart than St. Francis of Assisi. Fine. Just don’t expect me, of all people, to applaud you for it.”

  He didn’t answer. Danilo not insisting on the last word was such a novel phenomenon that, watching the door close behind him, she would have felt triumph if she hadn’t felt so exhausted. She collapsed into bed and slept, dreamless.

  The next morning she was late. Lisa overslept, Carlo was in a rare terrible mood, Mrs. Belling had to run errands before she could take him. Lisa didn’t get to Kenton until after ten, and it was clear that something big had gone down before she got there.

  “Stephanie, what—”

  “Not now. I have to write this report.”

  Stephanie never rebuffed her. Lisa was afraid to even approach Paul, who stalked tight-lipped through the corridors, looking to neither side.

  Hal was on the dock, pushing off in the boat. Blunt, honest Hal. Lisa flew out the back door and down the dock. “Hal! Take me with you!”

  “No.” Then he saw her face. “Oh, all right, but don’t talk to me. Just take this and count.” He thrust a clipboard at her with columns headed with the names of various fishes. Most of the boat was taken up with netting. Lisa understood; Hal was sampling the fish population in various parts of the Preserve to determine any changes from baseline since the alien animals appeared. The staff had already established that the post-snakers would eat fish. Meekly, Lisa settled herself in the boat.

  It was peaceful away from the research complex. Hal poled the boat past mixed stands of cattails and hard-stem bulrushes, around impenetrable stands of purple loosestrife. A wood duck had nested on a wind-throw mound and Lisa watched the ducklings slide into the water after their mother. A tern perchedon top of an abandoned muskrat house. As the boat glided along, frogs splashed from humm
ocks into the muddy water, croaking indignantly.

  She waited until they were far enough out that Hal wouldn’t turn back. With Hal it was always best to be direct and brief. “Hal, I wasn’t here this morning. Something happened. Please tell me.”

  “Politics happened. Fear happened. Stupidity happened. The Washington guy made a report.”

  “And . . .”

  “They don’t know down there what to do with the alien animals. But they don’t like the speed with which they’re both evolving and reproducing. Washington in its cover-your-ass indecision listed several courses of action they might take. One of them was to eliminate the threat entirely.”

  Lisa suddenly could feel her heartbeat in her teeth. “ ‘Threat’ ? ‘Eliminate’ ?”

  “You got it. As in, ‘Too many unknowns in allowing unknown organisms to propagate in human environments, with totally unknown effects.’ As in, ‘Kill them all.’ ”

  “But . . . how . . .”

  “Undecided, of course. Probably poison the entire ecosystem, before the Monsters from Outer Space spread too far. God, you’d think all these guys do is watch B-movies on late-night TV. No wonder nobody’s actually governing the country.”

  “But—”

  “No, there’s nothing Kenton can do. Haven’t you learned yet that science is mostly just the slave of politics and industry? It wasn’t once, but it is now. Grow up, girl.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut up, Lisa. I told you could only come if you shut up. Just count.”

  Expertly he cast another net, then raised its stiff perimeters high enough in the water to see its thrashing occupants. Lisa counted.

  They stayed out till mid-afternoon. Hal said not a single word more. Lisa followed suit. Just before they reached shore, a group of post-snakers swam past them, climbed onto a hummock, and disappeared into the trees. They reminded her of pioneers rolling westward, sturdy and purposeful. Cattails whispered softly, and her face was reflected in the calm golden water.