Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  I can’t look anymore at Daria. How do you look at something that isn’t there? I turn my head and see Agent Alcozer round the corner of the hallway outside the apartment, running toward us.

  And then, at that moment and not a second before, I remember what stank about San Cristobel.

  The scam went through fine. But afterward, Moshe came to me. “They want to do it again, this time with a mole. They’ve actually got someone inside the feds, in the Central Investigative Bureau. It looks good.”

  “Get me the details,” I said. And when Moshe did, I rejected the deal.

  “But why?” Anguished—Moshe hated to let a profitable thing go.

  “Because,” I said, and wouldn’t say more. He argued, but I stood firm. The new deal involved another organization, the one the mole came from. The Pure of Heart and Planet. Eco-nuts, into a lot of things on both sides of the law, but I knew what Moshe did not and wouldn’t have cared about if he had. The Pure of Heart and Planet were connected with the second big attack on LifeLong, on that Greek island. The Pure of Heart and Planet along with their mole in the feds, altered and augmented in sacrifice to the greater glory of biological purity, a guy from what used to be Des Moines.

  Alcozer runs faster than humanly possible. He carries something in his hands, a thick rod with knobs that I don’t recognize. Weapons change in ten years. Everything changes.

  And Daria knows. She looks at Alcozer, and she doesn’t move.

  The bodyguards don’t move, either, and I realize that of course they’ve reactivated the force fence around the apartment. It makes no difference. Alcozer barrels through it; whatever the military has developed for the Central Investigative Bureau, it trumps whatever Sequene has. It handles the guard ’bot, too, which just shuts down, erased by what must be the jammer of all jammers.

  The human bodyguard isn’t quite so easy. He fires at Alcozer, and the mole staggers. Blood howls out of him. As he goes down he throws something, so small you might not notice it if you didn’t know what was happening. I know; this is the first weapon that I actually recognize, although undoubtedly it’s been upgraded. Primitive. Contained. Lethal enough to do what it needs to without risking a hull breach, no matter where on an orbital or shuttle you set it off. An MPG, mini personal grenade, and all at once I’m back on Cyprus, in the Army, and training unused for sixty-five years surfaces in my muscles like blossoming spores.

  I lurch forward. Not smooth, nothing my drill sergeant would be proud of. But I never hesitate, not for a nanosecond.

  I can only save one of them. No time for anything else. Daria stand, beautiful as the moment I saw her in that taverna, in her green eyes a welcome for death. Overdue, so what kept you already? But those would be my words, not hers. Daria has no words, which are for the living.

  I hit Rosie’s solid flesh more like a dropped piano than a rescuing knight. We both go down—whump!—and I roll with her under the antique table, which is there after all, a heavy marble slab. My roll takes Rosie, the beloved of my faithful friend Stevan, against the wall, with me on the outside. I never hear the grenade; they have been upgraded. Electromagnetic waves, nothing as crude as fragments. Burns sluice across my back like burning oil. The table cracks and half falls.

  Then darkness.

  Romani have a saying: Rom corel khajnja, Gadzo corel farma. Gypsies steal the chicken, but it is the gaje who steal the whole farm. Yes.

  Yes.

  I wake in a white bed, in a white room, wearing white bandages under a white blanket. It’s like doctors think that color hurts. Geoff sits beside my bed. When I stir, he leans forward.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m here.”

  “How do you feel?”

  The inevitable, stupid question. I was MPG-fragged, a table fell on me, how should I feel? But Geoff realizes this. He says, quietly, “She’s dead.”

  “Rosie?”

  He looks blank—as well he might. “Who’s Rosie?”

  “What did I say? I don’t feel . . . I can’t . . .”

  “Just rest, Dad. Don’t try to talk. I just want you to know that Daria Cleary’s dead.”

  “I know,” I say. She’s been dead a long time.

  “So is that terrorist. Dead. It turns out he was actually a federal agent—can you believe it? But the woman you saved, Mrs. Kowalski, she’s all right.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She went back downstairs. Changed her mind about D-treatment. Now the newsholos want to interview her and they can’t find her.”

  And they never will. I think about Stevan and Rosie . . . and Daria. It isn’t pain I feel, although that might be because the doctors have stuck on my neck a patch the size of Rhode Island. Not pain, but hollowness. Emptiness. Cold winds blow right through me.

  When there’s nothing left to desire, you’re finished.

  In the hallway, ’bots roll softly past. Dishes clink. People murmur and someplace a bell chimes. Hollowness. Emptiness.

  “Dad,” Geoff says, and his tone changes. “You saved that woman’s life. You didn’t even know her, she was just some crazy woman you were being kind to, and you saved her life. You’re a hero.”

  Slowly I turn my head to look at him. Geoff’s eyes shine. His thin lips work up and down. “I’m so proud of you.”

  So it’s a joke. All of it—a bad joke. You’d think the Master of the Universe could do better. I go on an insane quest for a ring eaten by a robotic dog, I assist in the mercy killing of the only woman I ever loved, I save the life of one of the best criminals on the planet—my own partner-in-law in so many grand larcenies that Geoff’s head would spin—and the punch line is that my son is proud of me. Proud. This makes sense?

  But a little of the hollowness fills. A little of the cold wind abates.

  Geoff goes on, “I told Bobby and Eric what you did. They’re proud of their grampops, too. So is Gloria. They all can’t wait for you to come back home.”

  “That’s nice,” I say. Grampops—what a word. But the wind abates a little more.

  “Sleep, now, Dad,” Geoff says. He hesitates, then leans over and kisses my forehead.

  I feel my son’s kiss there long after he leaves.

  So I don’t tell him that I’m not going back home any time soon. I’m going to have the D-treatment, after all. When I do have to tell him, I’ll say that I want to live to see my grandsons grow up. Maybe this is even true. Okay—it is true, but the idea is so new I need time to get used to it.

  My other reason for getting D-treatment is stronger, fiercer. It’s been there so much longer.

  I want a piece of Daria with me. In the old days, I had her in a ring. But that was then, and this is now, and I’ll take what I can get. It is, will have to be, enough.

  BY FOOLS LIKE ME

  Nancy Kress will have three new books out next year: an SF novel from Tor, a collection of short stories from Golden Gryphon Press, and another short novel from Tachyon. In her latest story for us, she takes a chilling look at the fires the future could hold.

  Hope creeps quietly into my bedroom without knocking, peering around the corner of the rough doorjamb. I’m awake; sleep eludes me so easily now. I know from the awful smell that she has been to the beach.

  “Come in, child, I’m not asleep.”

  “Grandma, where’s Mama and Papa?”

  “Aren’t they in the field?” The rains are late this year and water for the crops must be carried in ancient buckets from the spring in the dell.

  “Maybe. I didn’t see them. Grandma, I found something.”

  “What, child?”

  She gazes at me and bites her lip. I see that this mysterious find bothers her. Such a sensitive child, though sturdy and healthy enough, God knows how.

  “I went to the beach,” she confesses in a rush. “Don’t tell Mama! I wanted to dig you some trunter roots because you like them so much, but my shovel went clunk on something hard and I . . . I dug it up.”

  “Hope,” I reprimand, because the
beach is full of dangerous bits of metal and plastic, washed up through the miles of dead algae on the dead water. And if a soot cloud blows in from the west, it will hit the beach first.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, clearly lying, “but, Grandma, it was a metal box and the lock was all rusted and there was something inside and I brought it here.”

  “The box?”

  “No, that was too heavy. The . . . just wait!”

  No one can recognize most of the bits of rusted metal and twisted plastic from before the Crash. Anything found in a broken metal box should be decayed beyond recognition. I call “Hope! Don’t touch anything slimy—” but she is already out of earshot, running from my tiny bedroom with its narrow cot, which is just blankets and pallet on a rope frame to keep me off the hard floor. It doesn’t; the old ropes sag too much, just as the thick clay walls don’t keep out the heat. But that’s my fault. I close the window shutters only when I absolutely have to. Insects and heat are preferable to dark. But I have a door, made of precious and rotting wood, which is more than Hope or her parents have on their sleeping alcoves off the house’s only other room. I expect to die in this room.

  Hope returns, carrying a bubble of sleek white plastic that fills her bare arms. The bubble has no seams. No mold sticks to it, no sand. Carefully she lays the thing on my cot.

  Despite myself, I say, “Bring me the big knife and be very careful, it’s sharp.”

  She gets the knife, carrying it as gingerly as an offering for the altar. The plastic slits more readily than I expected. I peel it back, and we both gasp.

  I am the oldest person on Island by two decades, and I have seen much. Not of the world my father told me about, from before the Crash, but in our world now. I have buried two husbands and five children, survived three great sandstorms and two years where the rains didn’t come at all, planted and first-nursed a sacred tree, served six times at the altar. I have seen much, but I have never seen so much preserved sin in one place.

  “What . . . Grandma . . . what is that?”

  “A book, child. They’re all books.”

  “Books?” Her voice holds titillated horror. “You mean . . . like they made before the Crash? Like they cut down trees to make?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trees? Real trees?”

  “Yes.” I lift the top one from the white plastic bubble. Firm thick red cover, like. . . dear God, it’s made from the skin of some animal. My gorge rises. Hope musn’t know that. The edges of the sin are gold. My father told me about books, but not that they could look like this. I open it.

  “Oh!” Hope cries. “Oh, Grandma!”

  The first slate—no, first page, the word floating up from some childhood conversation—is a picture of trees, but nothing like the pictures children draw on their slates. This picture shows dozens of richly colored trees, crowded together, each with hundreds of healthy, beautifully detailed green leaves. The trees shade a path bordered with glorious flowers. Along the path runs a child wearing far too many wraps, following a large white animal dressed in a wrap and hat and carrying a small metal machine. At the top of the picture, words float on golden clouds: alice in wonderland.

  “Grandma! Look at the—Mama’s coming!”

  Before I can say anything, Hope grabs the book, shoves it into the white bubble, and thrusts the whole thing under my cot. I feel it slide under my bony ass, past the sag that is my body, and hit the wall. Hope is standing up by the time Gloria crowds into my tiny room.

  “Hope, have you fed the chickens yet?”

  “No, Mama, I—”

  Gloria reaches out and slaps her daughter. “Can’t I trust you to do anything?”

  “Please, Gloria, it’s my fault. I sent her to see if there’s any more mint growing in the dell.”

  Gloria scowls. My daughter-in-law is perpetually angry, perpetually exhausted. Before my legs gave out and I could still do a full day’s work, I used to fight back. The Island is no more arid, the see-oh-too no higher, for Gloria than for anyone else. She has borne no more stillborn children than have other women, has endured no fewer soot clouds. But now that she and my son must feed my nearly useless body, I try to not anger her too much, to not be a burden. I weave all day. I twist rope, when there are enough vines to spare for rope. I pretend to be healthier than I am.

  Gloria says, “We don’t need mint, we need fed chickens. Go, Hope.” She turns.

  “Gloria—”

  “What?” Her tone is unbearable. I wonder, for the thousandth time, why Bill married her, and for the thousandth time I answer my own question.

  “Nothing,” I say. I don’t tell her about the sin under the bed. I could have, and ended it right there. But I do not.

  God forgive me.

  Gloria stands behind the altar, dressed in the tattered green robe we all wear during our year of service. I sit on a chair in front of the standing villagers; no one may miss services, no matter how old or sick or in need of help to hobble to the Grove. Bill half carried me here, afraid no doubt of being late and further angering his wife. It’s hard to have so little respect for my son.

  It is the brief time between the dying of the unholy wind that blows all day and the fall of night. Today the clouds are light gray, not too sooty, but not bearing rain, either.

  The altar stands at the bottom of the dell, beside the spring that makes our village possible. A large flat slab of slate, it is supported by boulders painstakingly chiseled with the words of God. It took four generations to carve that tiny writing, and three generations of children have learned to read by copying the sacred texts onto their slates. I was among the first. The altar is shaded by the six trees of the Grove and from my uncomfortable seat, I can gaze up at their branches against the pale sky.

  How beautiful they are! Ours are the tallest, straightest, healthiest trees of any village on Island. I planted and first-nursed one of them myself, the honor of my life. Even now I feel a thickness in my shriveled chest as I gaze up at the green leaves, each one wiped free of dust every day by those in service. Next year, Hope will be one of them. There is nothing on Earth lovelier than the shifting pattern of trees against the sky. Nothing.

  Gloria raises her arms and intones, “ ‘Then God said, “I give you every plant and every tree on the whole Earth. They will be food for you.’ ”

  “Amen,” call out two or three people.

  “ ‘Wail, oh pine tree,’ ” Gloria cries, “ ‘for the cedar has fallen, the stately trees are ruined! Wail, oaks—’ ”

  “Wail! Wail!”

  I have never understood why people can’t just worship in silence. This lot is sometimes as bad as a flock of starlings.

  “—oaks of Bashan, the—”

  Hope whispers, “Who’s Bashan?”

  Bill whispers back, “A person at the Crash.”

  “ ‘—dense forest has been cut down! And they were told—told!—not to harm the grass of Earth or any plant or tree.’ ”

  Revelation 9:4, I think automatically, although I never did find out what the words or numbers mean.

  “ ‘The vine is dried up!’ ” Gloria cries, “ ‘the fig tree is withered! The pomegranate and the palm and the apple tree, all the trees of the field, are dried up! Surely the joy of mankind is withered away!’ ”

  “Withered! Oh, amen, withered!”

  Joel 1:12.

  “ ‘Offer sacrifices and burn incense on the high places, under any spreading tree!’ ”

  Amy Martin, one of the wailers, comes forward with the first sacrifice, an unrecognizable piece of rusted metal dug up from the soil or washed up on the beach. She lays it on the altar. Beside me Hope leans forward, her mouth open and her eyes wide. I can read her young thoughts as easily as if they, too, are chiseled in stone: That metal might have been part of a “car” that threw see-oh-two and soot into the air, might have been part of a “factory” that poisoned the air, might have even been part of a “saw” that cut down the forests! Hope shudders, but I glance away from
the intensity on her face. Sometimes she looks too much like Gloria.

  Two more sacrifices are offered. Gloria takes an ember from the banked fire under the altar—the only fire allowed in the village—and touches it briefly to the sacrifices. “ ‘Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briars the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s glory, for an everlasting sign which—’ ”

  I stop listening. Instead I watch the leaves move against the sky. What is “myrtle”—what did it look like, why was it such a desirable plant? The leaves blur. I have dozed off, but I realize this only when the whole Village shouts together, “We will never forget!” and services are over.

  Bill carries me back through the quickening darkness without stars or moon. Without the longed-for rain. Without the candles I remember from my childhood on Island, or the dimly remembered (dreamed?) fireless lights from before that. There are no lights after dark on Island, nothing that might release soot into the air.

  We will never forget.

  It’s just too bad that services are so boring.

  Alice in Wonderland.

  Pride and Prejudice

  Birds of India and Asia

  Moby Dick

  Morning Light

  Jane Eyre

  The Sun Also Rises

  I sit on my cot, slowly sounding out the strange words. Of course the sun rises—what else could it do? It’s rising now outside my window, which lets in pale light, insects, and the everlasting hot wind.

  “Can I see, Grandma?” Hope, naked in the doorway. I didn’t hear the door open. She could have been Gloria. And is it right for a child to see this much sin?

  But already she’s snuggled beside me, smelling of sweat and grime and young life. Even her slight body makes the room hotter. All at once a memory comes to me, a voice from early childhood: Here, Anna, put ice on that bruise. Listen, that’s a—

  What bruise? What was I to listen to? The memory is gone.