Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  They drive adrift, and wither

  They wot not who make thither;

  But no such winds blow hither

  And no such things grow here.

  —Algernon Charles Swinburne,

  “The Garden of Proserpine”

  “Dee, I have a problem,” Perri said.

  Dee Stavros held the phone away from her ear and yawned hugely.

  What the hell time was it, anyway? The clock had stopped in the night: another power outage. Her one window was still dark. The air was thick and hot.

  “Dee, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Dee said to her sister. “So you’ve got a problem. What else is new?”

  “This is different.”

  “They’re all different.” Only they weren’t, really. Deadbeat boyfriends, a violent ex-husband, cars “stolen,” a last-minute abortion, bad checks for overdue rent . . . Perri’s messy life changed only in the details. Dee yawned again.

  Perri said, “I’ve been arrested for GMFA,” and Dee woke fully and sat up on the edge of the bed.

  GMFA. Genetic Modification Felony Actions. The newest crime-fighting tool, newest draconian set of laws, newest felonies to catch the attention of a blood-crazy public who needed a scapegoat for . . . everything. But Perri? Feckless, bumbling, dumb Perri? Not possible.

  Professional training took over. Dee said levelly, “Where are you now?”

  “Rikers Island,” Perri said, and at the relief in her voice—It’ll be all right, Dee will clean up after me again—Dee had to struggle to hold her anger in check.

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “No. I thought you’d take care of that.”

  Of course. And now that she was listening, Dee heard behind Perri all the muted miserable cacophony of Rikers Island, that chaotic hellhole where alleged perps for the larger hellhole of Manhattan were all taken, processed and mishandled. But Perri didn’t live in Manhattan. Nobody who could avoid it lived in Manhattan. The last time Dee had heard from her sister, Perri had been heading for the beaches of North Carolina.

  For once, Perri anticipated her. “I think they took me to Rikers because it was an offshore offense. On a boat. A ship, really . . . Get away! I’m not done, you bitch!”

  Dee said rapidly, “Relinquish the phone, Perri, before you get hurt. You had your two minutes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Oh, Dee, I’m—” The phone went dead.

  Dee stood holding it uselessly. Perri was what? Sorry? Scared? Innocent? But Perri was always those things in her own mind. Maybe Dee should just leave her there. Get out of Perri’s life once and for all. Teach Perri a lesson. Just leave her there to fend for herself for once . . .

  But Dee was all too familiar with Rikers. She’d retired from the force less than a year ago. She started to dress.

  “Why me?” Eliot Kramer said when he appeared at her fourth-floor, one-room apartment door just after dawn. Grimy sunshine glared through Dee’s big south window, the only nice thing about her room, other than its being on the far edge of Queens rather than the near edge. Many people were afraid of sunshine indoors. Ultraviolet, skin cancers—even though they’d been told that glass filtered out the danger. Most people never listened to what they were told.

  “Why you? Because you’re the only decent lawyer I know.”

  “Twenty years with NYPD and you know one decent lawyer? Come on, Dee.”

  “Decent in both senses, Eliot. Usually the moral ones are incompetent and the competent ones have been bought.”

  He shook his head. “Boy, I’m glad I don’t have your outlook on life.”

  “You will. You’re just not old enough yet.”

  “And how is old is this sister of yours?” Eliot asked as they hurried down the stairs. “What’s her name again?”

  “Perri Stavros. She’s twenty-seven. My kid sister—I raised her after our parents died in a train wreck.”

  “And what exactly happened?”

  “Haven’t any idea,” Dee said. “And after she tells us, we still might not know.”

  “Wonderful,” Eliot said unhappily.

  They emerged into the street, into the pale green light under the thick trees. Young trees, saplings, twigs . . . this section of Queens had only been planting for six years, since the Crisis, and there were none of the large trees that richer neighborhoods had immediately imported from God-knew-where. Trees grew up through holes jackhammered into the aging sidewalk, up beside crumbling stoops, up from buckets until they were big enough to transplant. A whole row struggled to thrive in the street itself, which had been narrowed to one lane now that cars were so unaffordable. Fast-growing trees, poplars and aspens and cottonwoods, although all trees (and everything else green) grew rapidly now. Whenever possible, trees with broad leaves for the maximum amount of photosynthesis, maximum amount of carbon dioxide scrubbed from the thick and overheated air.

  “Not too bad this morning,” Eliot said. “Pretty breathable.”

  “Not if we don’t get rain,” Dee said. Enough water, always, was the concern. Will it rain today? Don’t you think it’s clouding up? Might it rain tomorrow? Water meant biomass growth, giving mankind a chance of getting back into control the atmospheric O2/CO2loop so dangerously rising toward 1 percent of CO2, the upper limit of breathability.

  “It’ll rain,” Eliot said. “Put on your mask, we’re almost at the subway. One more question—do you at least know what class of contraband your sister was caught with?”

  “No,” Dee said. “It’s all felony, isn’t it?”

  “There’s felonies and there’s felonies,” Eliot said, and put on his mask.

  Perri had been caught with class-two contraband, which meant five to ten.

  “But there are extenuating circumstances,” Perri said, looking pleadingly at Eliot, who merely nodded, dazed.

  Dee was used to Perri’s effect on men. Even in the smelly, hot (God, it was hot, and only early June), windowless interrogation room, and even dirty and smelly herself, Perri’s beauty blazed. The perfect body, the long long legs, the thick honey-colored hair and full lips. But it was the eyes that always did it. Blue-green, larger than any other human eyes Dee had ever seen, fringed with long dark lashes. Perri’s eyes sparkled, never the same two seconds in a row, unless you counted their unchanging sweetness of expression. How did Perri keep that sweet expression, with the life she’d led? Dee didn’t know, hadn’t ever known.

  Eliot said, his tone not quite professional, “Why don’t you just tell me the entire story from the beginning, Miss Stavros.”

  “Perri, please.” She put her hand on his arm. “You will help me, won’t you, Eliot?” The gesture was unstudied, genuine. It finished Eliot.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Perri,” he said, and Dee snorted. No, it was not. Not this time. This time, Perri may have dug herself under too deep for Dee—or Eliot—to pull her out. No, please God, no. Dee knew about the kind of prisons that genemod offenders were sent to, and what happened to them there. In the current public climate, GMFA felons were the new pedophiles.

  Perri said, “Well, it started when I went down to North Carolina. To the beaches. I heard that sometimes holo companies recruited actresses from there? It turned out not to be true, but by that time I’d met Carl and well, you know.” She lowered her amazing eyes, but not before Dee saw the flicker of pain.

  “Go on,” Eliot said. “What’s Carl’s last name?”

  “He said Hansen. But it might not be. Anyway, I got pregnant.”

  Dee exploded, “How—”

  “Don’t yell at me, Dee. I know it was my fault. The implant ran out and I forgot to go get another one. And then Carl disappeared, and I didn’t have the money for an abortion, so I started sort of asking around about a cheap one.”

  Suddenly Dee noticed how pale Perri was. It wasn’t just the lack of makeup. Lips nearly the same color as her skin, dark smudges under her eyes . . . “You fool! Are you bleeding?”


  “Oh, on,” Perri said. “Everything went fine, Dee, and anyway I’m strong as an ox. You know that.”

  Eliot said, “Who performed the operation, Perri?”

  “Well, that’s just it. I know him only as ‘Mike.’ This girl I know said he was safe, he’d done it for her friend, and he didn’t charge anything at all. He did it out of idealism.” Her lips curved in such a tender smile that Dee was instantly suspicious.

  “Was this ‘Mike’ an actual licensed doctor?”

  “He didn’t do the operation. My girlfriend introduced us at this bar on the beach, and Mike took me on a powerboat out to where the big ship was with the doctor aboard.”

  And Perri had gone with him. Just like that. Unfucking-believable.

  Eliot said, “Names, Perri. The girlfriend; the doctor, anyone on the ship, the name of the ship itself.”

  “I don’t know, except for my girlfriend. Betsy Jefferson.”

  “Do you think that’s her real name?”

  “Probably not,” Perri said. “The beach is the kind of place you get to be somebody else if you want to, you know?”

  “I know,” Dee said grimly. “Perri, do you know how much crime and smuggling go through Hilton Head?”

  “I do now.”

  Eliot said patiently, “Go on with your story, Perri. Our time isn’t unlimited, unfortunately.”

  “The doctor did the abortion. When I came to, I rested a while. Everyone was kind to me. Then Mike said he couldn’t take me back, the ship had to leave. But he would send me in a little ‘remote boat.” That’s a—”

  “We know what it is,” Dee said harshly. “Smugglers use them all the time. They’re computer-guided to shore from out at sea, so if the feds are there to intercept the stuff, at least they don’t get the perps, too. Did the damn thing dump you in the ocean?”

  “Oh, no. It brought me right to a public dock in . . . Long Island? I guess so. The ship must have sailed a long way while I was knocked out. It was daylight. Mike said the remote boats aren’t illegal. I would have been all right, except . . .”

  “Except what?” Eliot said gently.

  Perri didn’t answer for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low. “The ship was full of plants. Flowers, little trees, all sorts of stuff growing on the deck in the sunshine. Beautiful. I . . . I wanted something to remember Mike by. You don’t know how good he was to me, Dee, how kind. I felt . . . anyway. I picked a flower when nobody was looking and put it under my shirt. I was wearing this loose man’s shirt because since I got pregnant, nothing of mine fit right. Nobody saw me take the flower.”

  “One flower?” Dee said. “That’s all?”

  “The flower wasn’t big. It had beautiful yellow petals that were the same color as Mike’s hair. That’s why I took it. Don’t look like that, Dee! A cop saw the remote boat land and came over to the dock because even though they’re so tiny I guess they’re pretty expensive and he was checking it out. And I staggered a little getting out of the boat because it hadn’t even been a day yet since the operation. I was feeling a little woozy. It was so hot, and it was a bad air day. The flower fell out from under my shirt. Below the petals along the stem were all these hard little balls, maybe two dozen of them. One burst apart when the flower fell, and the cop saw it and took me in. I don’t even know what it was!”

  “I do,” Eliot said. “As your attorney, the charges were of course available to me and I downloaded them. The seed pods are awaiting complete analysis at the GFCA lab, but the prelim shows genetic modification for lethal insecticides. Airborne seeds, which makes it a class-two genemod felony.”

  “But I didn’t know!” Perri cried. “And I never understood what’s so bad about plants that kill insects, anyway! Don’t look like that, Dee, I’m not stupid! I know the history of the Crisis as well as you do. But those genemod plants that almost wiped out all the wheat in the Midwest were only one kind of engineered plant, and if people like Mike believe that other genemods can be—”

  Dee cut her off. “People like Mike are criminals in it for the profit. And it wasn’t just the wheat-killing genemod that caused the Crisis. And you may not be stupid, Perri, but you surely have acted like it!”

  Eliot held up his hand. “Ladies, the thing to focus on here is—”

  “No, Dee’s right,” Perri said. She sat up straighter and her washed-out lovely face took on an odd dignity. “I’ve been a fool, and I know it. But I had no . . . what is it, Eliot? Criminal intent? Surely that counts for something.”

  Eliot said quietly, “Not very much, I’m afraid. I don’t want to lie to you, Perri. The GMFA Act is intended to prosecute illegal genemod organizations working for profit and willing to do anything at all to protect that profit. The Act is wide-reaching and harsh because it’s modeled on RICO, the old Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization laws, and because genetic engineering represents such a danger to the entire planet since the Greenhouse Crisis. Or politicians think it does. Unfortunately, people like you fall under the Act as well, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty by you if I didn’t inform you honestly that your case isn’t going to play well in front of a jury of the usual hysterical citizens whose grandmothers and babies are having trouble breathing.”

  “But the Greenhouse Crisis and the wheat kill-off were two separate things!” Perri cried, surprising Dee.

  “But most people don’t separate them because they happened concurrently,” Eliot said. “All at once the air was ruined, there was no bread, prices for everything rocketed because the government made energy so expensive to try to control industrial emissions . . . all at once. In my experience, that’s how juries see it. Perri, I think you’re much better off pleading guilty and letting me plea bargain for you.”

  Perri was silent. Dee said thickly, already knowing the answer, “Where will she do time?”

  “Probably Cotsworth. It’s the usual place for the east coast.”

  Cotsworth. It was notorious. Dee had never been inside, but she didn’t have to be. She’d seen other places like it. It wasn’t as bad as the men’s worst prisons—they never were—but a girl who looked like Perri . . . was like Perri . . .

  Perri said, “All right, Eliot. If you think I should plead guilty, I will.”

  Trusting him completely, on a half-hour acquaintance. Exactly how she got into this in the first place with “Carl,” with “Mike.” She would never learn.

  Eliot said, “I’ll do everything I can for you, Perri.”

  A wan smile, but the astonishing blue-green eyes dazzled. “I know you will. I trust you.”

  Dee wasn’t Perri. She probed, tested, cut. “What if the FBI finds ‘Mike’ ?”

  “They won’t find Mike,” Eliot said. They stood at the subway entrance before the hellish descent underground. Eliot was going to his office in Brooklyn, Dee to Queens. “God, you of all people know they won’t find Mike. The Genetic Modification Crimes section of the FBI is overworked, there aren’t enough of them, and Perri is such small potatoes they probably won’t even look for Mike.”

  “The ship doesn’t sound like small potatoes.”

  “They might not even believe the ship exists. Perri wouldn’t be the first perp to falsify events.”

  “Do you think that’s what she’s doing?”

  “No,” Eliot said. “I think she’s telling the absolute truth. I think she’s that rare find, a person incapable of dishonesty. But I don’t think the FBI or the federal attorney will think so. They’re paid not to.”

  “But you think the ship exists,” Dee persisted.

  “Yes. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of them out there, in international waters where it’s much harder to do anything about them. They genemod everything from insect-killing supercrops for idealists who want to save the Earth, to insect-killing supercrops for profiteers who want to own it. And who don’t care if they inadvertently kill off an entire Third World country’s rice crop in the process. Oh, Perri’s ship is out there, all right, with ‘Mike’ running
it. Although why he’s also performing abortions is a bit murky. But I’m going to downplay that aspect with the federal attorney. It makes Perri look irresponsible.”

  “She is irresponsible.”

  “Sometimes,” Eliot said, “what looks like irresponsibility is really innocence.”

  Here we go again, Dee thought. But if a ridiculous infatuation would increase Eliot’s work on Perri’s behalf, let the poor sot be infatuated.

  It was ironic. Raising Perri, she was always the one “mother” who wouldn’t let Perri take the bus by herself, walk home from school alone, go downtown. Cops were like that. Unlike the other mothers, Dee had known what was waiting out there in the street. And then the grown-up Perri sought out more trouble than any of her childhood friends.

  Dee said, “So you don’t think the authorities will look for Mike. And even though it would help Perri’s plea, you won’t, either.”

  Eliot said bluntly, “I can’t afford the resources to look. Can you?”

  “No,” Dee said.

  “Also, the case will be heard in under a week, probably. They dispose of these small things as fast as they can, fair or not. You know that, Dee.”

  “Yes, I know that. But finding the ship would aid an appeal for Perri.”

  “Yes. But they’re not going to find it, Dee.”

  “No,” she said. “But I am.”

  THE COAST OF CAROLINA IS THE NEW FLORIDA! blared e-banners at the train station.

  Dee believed it. Ruin one area, making it so hot the ecology becomes frightening and the people leave, move on to another. Most of Florida was now genuine jungle, teeming with foreign plants and animals escaped from Miami International Airport, always the major import center for such things. Monkeys, caimans, lygodia, alligators, and insects carrying everything from dengue fever to new diseases without names. Some of them, of course, genemod. It was the diseases that had made West Palm retirees, South Beach fun seekers, and the Miami criminal underground all move north.

  She took a cheap motel room far from the action and went shopping. To the experienced, cops were instantly identifiable. That included ex-cops. She bought a modest swimsuit which at least covered her nipples, added a loose sheer robe to veil her forty-four-year-old body, studied the locals and purchased something guaranteed to make her hair lie in flat sculptured loops along one side of her neck. She didn’t overdo it, another classic mistake of undercover cops. Her lipstick wasn’t too gold, her eye makeup not too blue. She bought her beach bag, sandals, and music cube at a used-stuff store. She would do.