Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  They had fluttered in from the first two chambers, clacking and fussing like the geese they were. Marigold sat in the center of this feminine maelstrom, on a chair whose back was topped by two of the tyromistress’s watchravens.

  “Tyro Marigold! Tell me what happened between you and Dame Cecilie!”

  She did. It was precisely as I had seen in the spell pool, of course. I listened to her stumble through the account, as dim-witted in the telling as in all else. And then I was ready for the important question.

  “And from your aunt’s haunt—did you learn anything?”

  Marigold smiled strangely. “Oh, yes.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  She recited, in the same mechanical voice with which she recited her memorized lore in class (when she could remember it at all):

  “ ‘Be willing to change your armor. If you can no longer do something well, don’t do it any longer. Do not go armored in failure. Give yourself to the new life completely.‘”

  “But what does it mean to you, you stupid child?”

  Marigold took a long time to answer. The gaggle of girls stayed quiet, almost holding their breaths. Finally she said slowly, “It means that dung happens, and when it does, you should walk on a different path.”

  That, of course, I did not put in my paper, which was dignified, important, magnificent. I penned it that night, working feverishly until dawn (of course, I’d already written the “Background” and “Search of the Literature” sections). In the morning I sent it off by Feudal Express, which guaranteed that it absolutely, positively would be in Queen Eleanor’s court by the next day.

  The summons from court would probably take a week. Maybe less. And I would be on my way, out of Castle Olansa, free forever of stupid tyros and squires and second-rate faculty.

  Maybe it was self-indulgent of me, but I took my imminent escape as reason to no longer treat the girls with kid gloves. Finally, I could speak to them in class as their stupidity deserved. It was a great relief to me.

  “No, no, Marigold, not like that,” Anna said. “Hold your arm like this, so I can’t get under your guard . . . Yes. Much better.”

  The tyros went at it again in the practice yard, Anna in standard armor, Marigold in double-weight. They circled, feinted, thrust . . . and Marigold scored.

  “Well done!” Anna said.

  In the circle of watchers, Elizabeth whispered to Catherine, “Mar really is getting better, isn’t she?”

  “She was never that bad,” Catherine said loyally.

  “Oh, come on, you know she was terrible. But with Anna giving her all these lessons . . . Anna isn’t so mean, after all.”

  “I still don’t like her, Liz. But she’s tough, I’ll give her that. She’s out there like a champion even after what the loremaster called her in class today. And she’s being very nice to Marigold.”

  “She should be, after what—”

  “Shhh,” Catherine said. “Here he comes!”

  The girls held their breaths. Carefully the circle shifted, a feminine realignment to shield Marigold and Anna until Loremaster Gwillam had passed. However, he hurried past with no more than a single contemptuous sneer at the practice yard.

  “He’s going to pack,” Elizabeth said. “He got a summons from Queen Eleanor’s court.

  He leaves tomorrow.”

  The two girls covered their mouths and giggled.

  In the practice circle, steadily improving under Anna’s careful tuition, Marigold’s eyes were as bright as her armor.

  * * *

  I had nailed the lid of my box and packed the fragile items, such as the spell pool, in barrels lined with hay. The headmistress had given me a cheap cloak pin and a cold speech of farewell, the ungrateful bitch. As I checked under the bed for any forgotten items, I noticed the note pinned to my pillow.

  Come to the wood at moon rise

  to meet Dame Cecilie.

  Methinks you will regret it

  if you do not.

  My first reaction was outrage. Who would dare . . . The writing was large and round and girlish, an inkblot on one corner.

  “Ever deplore,” said one of those damned ravens, and for some reason, a cold spear pricked my spine.

  Bluebells bloomed in the wood, and honeysuckle and loosestrife and violets. Summer light filtered down between the green leaves, dappling the ground with gold. It was two days before graduation. The air was light and warm.

  “Lloorrremmmaaasssttterrr Gggwwillaaammm . . .”

  And she was there, First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin . . . dressed in bloody armor, pale as death, one-armed until she moved.

  “Hey nonny nonny, Bill,” she said, and threw away the carved stump of her severed arm. With both hands she pulled off the waxy death mask, and I was staring at Tyro Anna. A burst of laughter behind me sent me whirling to see the rest of the tyros rising from bushes and dropping from trees.

  “What is the meaning of—”

  “You can guess the meaning, Bill,” Anna said. “Can’t you?”

  All I could do was stare in stupefaction.

  “It was a mummery,” Anna said. “Only you never guessed it, did you? We did our research on our classmates’ knightly kin—thank you for teaching us how—and we put it to good use. A shame you already wrote your paper and sent it off, isn’t it? You’re going to look a bit of a fool when the truth comes out.”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out, only a bleat. “Marrr—”

  “Marigold didn’t know it was us,” Anna said. “Nor did any of the Third Bedchamber.

  They couldn’t have played their parts so well if they had. Oh, and there’s one thing more that you don’t know, loremaster. After graduation, I’m not doing my squireship here at Castle Olansa. I’m doing it at court. My cousin has found me a place there. In fact, there’ll be a steady supply of us tyros going up to court in the future. You’ll probably want to use your new position to make things as comfortable as possible for us, don’t you think?”

  “Or else,” Elizabeth said.

  “Don’t you have anything to say, Bill? Your mouth is wide open. Don’t you want to call us silly bitches or stupid idiots or worthless dung?”

  Marigold said, “Maybe that’s enough, Anna. He looks sorry.”

  “Oh, he’s sorry, aren’t you, Bill? He’s sorry he thought we were too stupid and too defenseless to take care of ourselves.”

  Anna stepped closer. She raised her forearm and I saw, through my numb horror, that the inside of the elbow had a tiny tattoo. Of clasped hands.

  Suddenly I remembered that the emblem on Marigold’s breastplate, the one that was always coming loose, was two clasped female hands.

  “Your lore doesn’t include everything,” Catherine said to me. “We girls have lore among ourselves, you know. We go armored in each other.”

  “Whereas you go armored in failure,” Anna said, smiling, “unless you can be willing to change your armor. If you can no longer do something well, don’t do it any longer. Give yourself to your new life completely, Bill.”

  “That’s us,” said Elizabeth, “we’re your new life. Serving us as we come up to court, one by one by one.”

  “Never yore,” a raven said. “Forever more.”

  And I could say nothing at all, just gaze at them in horror: the stupid silly bitches, the clasped hands, the unthinkable future.

  2001

  PLANT ENGINEERING

  “In Europe,” Judy said innocently, “they call it ‘Frankenfood.’ ”

  Robert Cavanaugh, off-duty FBI agent, looked at his wife with some irritation. She was a science writer; she was supposed to know things like that. It was still irritating. Or maybe it was just irritating because Cavanaugh did not want to be at the Glentree Mall on a Friday night, at Judy’s cousin’s book signing.

  “In America I call it boring,” Cavanaugh said just as flames shot up from Marilyn’s skillet onstage and the crowd went “Oooooooohhhhhhh” as if they’d never before s
een cherries flambé.

  The stage was actually a makeshift platform in the middle of the mall, between The Gap and Weismann Jewelers, set under a sign suspended from the ceiling by chains. The sign said:

  MEET MARILYN BAKER!

  AUTHOR OF

  COOKING WITH GENETICALLY ENHANCED FOODS!

  The first, fourth, and fifth words were burned into the sign in elaborate curlicues; the rest were assembled from plastic letters inserted into slotted trays. Under this reusable endorsement, Judy’s cousin demonstrated how to prepare dinner using the increased-flavor, increased-shelf-life, decreased-waste, disease-resistant miracles of genetic engineering. Her ingredients were prominently displayed with the brand names facing outward: Sheffield Orchard Cherries, Konig Currant Jelly. Pius, to Cavanaugh’s surprise, bottles of Bacardi rum and Courvoisier. His surprise was not as strong as his irritation.

  Cavanaugh was not interested in cooking, which was the first irritant. The second was that Marilyn had started her demonstration half an hour late, while various curious passersby climbed on the stage to inspect the microphone and “‘kitchen counters” and two-burner portable stove. The third irritant was that Judy hadn’t actually seen Marilyn, only a second cousin, in years. Moreover, Judy had told Cavanaugh she hadn’t ever liked Marilyn, who was ‘“loud and unpleasant.” Yet here they were, wasting a perfectly good evening, partly because of Judy’s guilt over neglected family (Cavanaugh’s own family lived two thousand blessed miles away) and partly because Judy had just happened to be planning a major freelance article on genetic enhancements to tomatoes.

  “Who wants a taste of cherries flambé?” Marilyn shrilled from the stage. “You, sir? Climb right on up here! No? What, you don’t like cherries flambé? Oh, come on, everybody likes cherries, it’s positively un-American to not like cherries! George Washington and his little tree, ‘Can you bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy?’—you don’t want to be un-American, do you? What are you, a foreign terrorist?”

  The crowd laughed. The un-American cherry-hater, a burly man in his forties, flushed and scowled. Smoke from the portable stove curled upward. Quite a lot of smoke,

  Cavanaugh noted; Marilyn must have sloshed food on the burners. Judy’s cousin was a sloppy cook. The thought filled him with obscure satisfaction,

  “No cherries for the un-American wimp!” Marilyn said, pouring the flaming fruit over scoops of hard vanilla ice cream set out in Styrofoam cups. The flames went out. With exaggerated grimaces of enjoyment, she put a heaping spoonful into her own mouth.

  Everything happened at once.

  Two dozen people streamed toward the stage from a side entrance to the mall. Dressed in bright green overalls and T-shirts, they all shouted unintelligibly, waving signs that said NO FRAKENFOOD HERE and NO MUTANT CROPS! and STOP THIS TERRIFYING TAMPERING. On lookers laughed and pointed. All of the protesters stayed well back from the stage, behind the crowd. Onstage, Marilyn went wide-eyed and spat out her mouthful of cherries and ice cream, which spattered the heads and shoulders of those in the front rows. These people yelled out and wiped themselves in disgust. Marilyn lurched sideways and fell over. Someone screamed.

  Judy gasped and pushed her way through the crowd. Cavanaugh pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. By the time he caught up with Judy, Marilyn lay gasping vainly for breath, fumbling at her clothing. She tried to speak and failed. Her face had broken out in huge red splotches. Then her eyes rolled in her head and she went still.

  Judy started CPR. Cavanaugh seized Marilyn’s mike and shouted, “Is there a doctor here? Medical emergency . . . we need a doctor here!”

  No doctor appeared. Judy continued CPR. Most of the crowd, either fleeing involvement or wiping off spat-out cherries, fled the area. The medtechs were prompt, but by the time they whisked Marilyn away in an ambulance, Cavanaugh doubted that there was much point.

  From force of habit he looked at his watch. It said eight-thirty.

  “Your cousin died of severe anaphylactic shock,” the ER doctor said to Judy, after a long wait in a hospital lounge more dismal than some police interrogation rooms Cavanaugh had seen. “We found this in her pocket.”

  She handed Judy a small object that Cavanaugh didn’t recognize. Judy drew in a sharp breath.

  “It’s EpiPen, a spring-loaded injector of epinephrine” the doctor said. “Commonly used for the most severe allergic attacks. Did your cousin have, say, a food allergy?”

  “I don’t know,” Cavanaugh said. He looked at his wife. Her face was ash gray. Marilyn had been fumbling in her pocket when Judy had reached her, fumbling to reach her injector. If Judy had only known . . .

  “It’s not your fault,” Cavanaugh said quietly into his wife’s ear. To the doctor he said, “Marilyn was a cooking expert in genetically altered food. She was very knowledgeable about it—she wouldn’t have been using anything she was severely allergic to. It had to be something else entirely.”

  “Genetically altered foods?” the doctor said doubtfully. “I’m afraid I don’t know very much about them yet.”

  “Nobody really does,” Judy said. “They’re so new. In Europe they call them Frankenfoods.”

  “I’m sure they’re safe,” Cavanaugh said. “Something else is going on here.” Something else, anything else that would take that ashy look off Judy’s face.

  The doctor shook her head. “Anaphylactic shock is pretty unmistakable. I don’t know what Ms. Baker was allergic to, but it was to something. I’m sorry.”

  Judy said nothing. Her face did not change.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Cavanaugh said. He said it on the way home from the hospital. He said it as they got into bed. He said it at dinner, on their front porch, as they sat watching TV. It didn’t seem to make any difference. Judy’s replies all seemed to be non sequiturs, although of course they were not.

  At dinner Judy said. “I called Marilyn’s sister, my cousin Pam. Pam said Marilyn was allergic to peanuts. Fatally allergic. Everyone in the family knew that, Pam said. Everyone.”

  “You didn’t know it, honey.”

  “Ignorance does not wipe out culpability,” Judy answered, and Cavanaugh had no reply. He was FBI. Culpability was his job.

  Sitting on the front porch. Judy said. “The shock reaction is caused by a specific protein in peanuts. Protein DNA can be transferred between species when the scientists do the genetic engineering. They tried splicing Brazil-nut genes into soybeans to make them more nutritious, and you know what happened? The soybeans triggered reactions in people allergic to Brazil nuts. You don’t know anymore what foreign genes you’re getting in your food.”

  “Well, that just means Marilyn caused her own death. Inadvertently, I mean.”

  “Not if I had recognized EpiPen.”

  As they watched TV Judy said, “All kinds of groups have launched public education programs about peanut allergies. Schools, government, medical groups. Everybody knows about it, that is, everybody with the awareness of a head of cabbage.”

  Genetically altered cabbage, no doubt, Cavanaugh thought but didn’t say. Judy had lost weight. Her hair hadn’t been washed. Worse, his wife had lost her argumentative sass. Judy was wallowing in unearned guilt, and Cavanaugh thought she should stop it. Still, if it had been his cousin, and he who hadn’t found the epinephrine . . .

  “Judy, honey, you don’t even know for sure that it was a peanut allergy. There’s no proof.”

  Her only answer was to read more news articles on genetic engineering. These were everywhere, all featuring Marilyn’s picture as she crumpled under the cheery sign advertising her book. The press hadn’t shown up at Marilyn’s signing—she wasn’t important enough—but the damn amateur photographers were always in the wrong places at the right times.

  “Judy, honey—”

  “Did you know,” Judy said, “that forty percent of the U.S. soybean crop is genetically engineered?”

  “Vic, I need a favor.”

  Victor Spelling, FBI DNA lab, paused beside his T
oyota in the Hoover Building underground parking lot and eyed Cavanaugh. “A favor? What kind of favor? What’s all that stuff?”

  Cavanaugh tilted his two brown paper shopping bags so that Vic could see inside.

  “Rum, brandy, ice cream—you giving a party? Am I invited?”

  “No. I mean, if I were giving a party, you’d be invited. Sure. But I’m not. I need samples of all these things analyzed, Vic, down to the DNA level. To see if any of it has any DNA from peanut genes spliced in. Specifically, the DNA that makes the proteins that cause peanut allergies.

  Vic’s eyebrows, already generous, seemed to grow bushier. “Peanut DNA? In Bacardi Gold?”

  “No, huh? Well, good. One less thing to analyze. How about the brandy?”

  “Not in this world. Courvoisier would die first. You got a case number for this analysis?”

  “It’s off-the-record.”

  The two men locked eyes. They had been at college together, fifteen years ago. Cavanaugh tried to get into his eyes powerful reminders of frat parties and study sessions. Once he had actually rewritten an English paper for Vic, who had been too hung over to realize that Wordsworth was not a novelist. “Robert . . .”

  “Please, Vic. It’s a personal matter, and really important.” Judy’s hair was still greasy, and she looked as if she’d lost as much as ten pounds, which she could ill afford. The Unhealthy Obsession Diet.

  Vic sighed. “Give it here. Oh, God, the ice cream’s melting.”

  “It’s genetically engineered,” Cavanaugh said, which may or may not have been a non sequitur.

  The DNA analysis took a week. Cavanaugh was astonished at what went into genetically altered food. The sugarcane used in the currant jelly had a gene splice to make its own insecticide. The currants had been engineered for shorter growth time. The cherries were enhanced for sugar production and hence greater sweetness. The soy in the ice cream had been modified for greater yield. The lab report was complete, detailed, fascinating. Nowhere did it mention anything connected to peanuts.

  Whatever had killed Marilyn Baker, it hadn’t been her cherries flambé.