Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  He meant only that he sensed she was about to leave him alone in the apartment and he didn’t like that. He’d said the same thing last week when she’d had to see the doctor about her blood pressure. You couldn’t bring a dog to the doctor’s. But Annie looked at him in wonder.

  “You’re right, Wulf. It’s as much my apartment as his. And I’ve . . . I’ve earned it.”

  But how to do this? The first step was easy enough; lock the doors. Not the e-locks, which were always on anyway, but the deadbolt that was standard equipment on all New York apartments. Annie pushed it into place.

  “It’s past time to start dinner,” the refrigerator said reproachfully. Annie got a pair of scissors, found the wire that connected the scanners inside the fridge to the microphone outside, and cut the wires. A minute later Don’s face appeared on the kitchen screen.

  “Annie! What’s going on there? What happened to Leila?”

  Leila. The voice of the refrigerator was Leila. The girl on the phone, the live girl, had been nameless. There was no way to turn off the kitchen screen, which was built into the wall, but surely it must be connected to the main computer in Don’s study? Annie went there, Don talking at her all the way: from the kitchen screen, from the living room TV, from the computer on his desk. She crawled under the desk and unplugged everything she found there, but Don’s voice didn’t stop.

  “Annie! Are you—”

  Back-up. Batteries or a generator or radio waves or something. The whole apartment was one big machine, and Don expected—had always expected—Annie to be part of it, one more cog or chip or whatever machines had nowadays. No more.

  “Don, you don’t live here anymore.”

  His face paled, so white that for a wild moment Annie thought he might faint. Instead, shockingly, he said quietly, “I know you never loved me.”

  That was true, but she didn’t know that Don knew it. The realization burned along her already charred nerves.

  All at once he barked, “Why did you ever marry me?”

  Because you were there. Because all my friends were getting married. Because you knew about cars and taxes and machines and I thought you’d always take care of me. Because nobody else asked. But she couldn’t say those things, and before she could say anything else, color rushed back into Don’s face and he said, “If you think you can just—”

  Annie marched out of the study, slamming the door. A deep part of her mind said That was our last chance, but the words seemed meaningless. In the living room she unplugged the TV, and Don’s face disappeared. However, the kitchen screen had no controls. Annie took the hammer from the kitchen drawer and smashed the screen.

  “Help! Help!” shrieked the security system. “Intruder! Intruder!” A wailing siren pierced the air.

  Was a signal being sent from the system to the security company, to the police? Of course it was. Amazed at herself, Annie picked up the phone, hit the memory button, and shouted over the din, “Ballinger Home Protection? I’d like to report a false alarm. Actually, I think there’s something wrong with the system. I can’t make it stop, and there’s been no intruder here!”

  “Name and password?”

  Annie gave them. A few moments later the noise stopped. “I’ll have to send a technician to repair the problem, ma’am, but I can’t get one there until tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. Just . . . just shut down the whole system until then.”

  “Are you sure? You understand that you will be without—”

  “Just shut it down until tomorrow!”

  He did. But the instant after Annie hung up, the phone rang again. Don. She lifted the receiver to be sure, hung it up again, then removed it from the cradle and left it off.

  In the study Don was still calling to her; she could hear the sound but not distinguish any words. But then, all at once, his voice was clear and loud in the room, and she froze.

  “Annie. Stop this right now. Do you hear me?”

  The sound was coming from her pocket. Annie fished out her cell and there was Don’s face. It had hardened, like setting cement. Annie marched to the window and opened it. She peered out to make sure no one stood in the courtyard below. Then she dropped the cell four stories down onto the pavement. October air drifting through the open window cooled her face, her trembling hands.

  What else? Nothing else here could order her, command her . . . All at once the house burst into madness.

  Lights blinked on and off. Doors to the microwave and the dishwasher banged open and shut, open and shut. The toaster went Pop! Pop! Pop! The blender whirred. Networking is the most powerful tool of this century. Annie screamed, but a moment later, contempt flooded her. A tantrum, that’s all it was, no different from the tantrums Carol had had when she was four, when she’d bang her head against the wall or kick her heels on the floor. Don was behaving like a spoiled four-year-old.

  Maybe that’s all he’d ever been. And maybe if she’d realized that decades ago, not been so afraid of him . . . but no. They were just too different. Two fundamentally different sorts of people.

  Cautiously, Annie approached the kitchen. The appliances continued to bang and whirr and pop, but they couldn’t actually do anything to her. She looked up at the smoke alarms, but they weren’t sounding; presumably Don didn’t want to alert the building super, who’d always seemed to prefer Annie over Don. But then, Annie hadn’t treated Luigi like just another machine. Sometimes Annie—oh, not now, but years ago, when she’d been younger—had fantasized that Luigi was actually her husband. She lived with him in his cheerful little apartment behind the stairs. He cooked spaghetti for them. He called her “Cara.” They laughed together at movies that showed sleek-haired barbarian women fighting ghouls while dressed in high-heeled boots and gleaming golden bras.

  Beowulf sat under the still open window in the living room, whining softly. When Annie stroked his head, he said, “I don’t like this.”

  “I know. But it’s all right, Wulf. Look, I’m going to unplug all the lamps in this room and we’ll just ignore the noise in the kitchen, okay? It’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  To get the overhead living room light to go off, Annie had to stand shakily on a chair, unscrew the glass fixture, and remove the three bulbs underneath. She closed the door to the bedroom, where the alarm clock was changing radio stations like a drunken trucker. Annie lit candles in the living room. After ten more minutes, the kitchen appliances stopped.

  The living room, bathed in the soft glow of candlelight and with twilight closing in outside, fell into silent peace. Wulf went to sleep at Annie’s feet. She sat in her rocker, trying to think what to do next, although it was hard to think when the apartment was so warm . . . so very warm, especially considering the open window . . .

  Annie jumped up and checked the thermostat. Eighty degrees and rising. She pushed the button to turn off the heat, but nothing happened. Well, if Don thought he could broil her out, he was wrong. She opened all the windows as far as they would go and took off her sweater, shoes, and socks. There was food in the kitchen, food that she could eat without cooking it; she was suddenly afraid of the oven and microwave. And water—

  She ran into the bathroom. Only a drizzle of water came out of the tap. Don had somehow turned it off. But there were two gallons of bottled water in the fridge . . . in “Leila.” Carefully Annie opened the refrigerator and pulled them out. Nothing happened. Leila was vanquished. For a long moment Annie held the water bottles, one in each hand, against her fevered cheeks.

  Emboldened by victory over the refrigerator, Annie went into the bedroom. Here it was even hotter. Methodically she went through the pockets of Don’s pants and jackets, something she had never done in thirty-six years, as well as through his dresser. She found $246.83, a box of Trojans—Annie was post-menopausal—and a love letter from Joanne. So that was the girl’s name. Joanne couldn’t spell, Annie noted with scorn. The scorn felt good.

  Was $246.83 enough for a pl
ane ticket to Carol in San Diego? Maybe. But Annie didn’t feel close to her daughter, who was so much like Don, and she didn’t like San Diego, which always seemed to be smoky from wildfires. And she could hardly go to Joel, living in student housing. Also, she realized, she didn’t want to leave this apartment. It was hers now, earned by years of enduring brusque orders and patronizing comments and domestic labor. Annie wasn’t budging. The young women of today had it right: Hang onto what was yours.

  She tried to think it through. Don would be home soon. He would bang on the front door, and she wouldn’t open it. If he did fetch Luigi, Annie would yell through the door that Don had hit her and she was afraid to open the door. Luigi would call the cops. No, that wouldn’t be good—if the cops came, they’d see she had no bruises and they’d let Don in. So maybe she could—

  “Annie!” Don’s yell—so loud!—from the living room. Annie froze. She had unplugged the TV, had unplugged anything that could . . . Wulf raced into the bedroom.

  “Annie, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Don’s voice, coming from Wulf’s helmet. How could he do that? Some sort of wireless voodoo . . . but what struck her like a blow was that Don was using Wulf. As if Wulf were just one more appliance. Springing toward the dog, Annie tried to yank off the helmet. Don’s voice continued to come from it.

  “I’m nearly home, Annie. And when I get there, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do. What makes you think you can disturb my tech, wreck my possessions, disorder the life I’ve worked my ass off to give you—”

  My. My. I. My.

  The helmet, held by rigid metal straps under Wulf’s chin and around his collar, wouldn’t come off. Don continued to grate, and now it seemed to Annie that his words were somehow hurting Wulf. The dog trembled and his brown eyes turned beseechingly to hers. Was Wulf just afraid of the unaccustomed shouting, or was Don’s fury somehow going through Wulf’s brain—that brain connected to the technology on his innocent head?

  “Stop!” Annie cried, even though she knew Don couldn’t hear her. She went back into the living room, sweat coursing down her forehead and between her breasts. The thermostat said eighty-six degrees. Annie took off her blouse, standing by the window in her polyester slacks and Playtex Eighteen-Hour bra. Gray curls frizzed around her head. The dog followed, whimpering.

  The e-locks on the front door lit up. Banging started on the reinforced wood. “Open up, Annie! Damn it, open up!”

  She stared at the door, her hand on Wulf’s trembling back.

  “Goddamn it to hell, you’ll regret it if you don’t open up!”

  Annie stood still. Did the neighbors hear? No, the rest of the fourth floor was still at work. Now Don would call Luigi, call the cops . . .

  He didn’t. Nor did things in the apartment start going wild again. Instead Annie heard a low, intense whine outside the door, like a dentist drill. Through the tiny crack between door and frame, just above the deadbolt, came a thin beam of red light.

  The deadbolt began to cleave apart. Don had some kind of laser-y saw.

  She was frightened by the strength of her rage. It felt primitive, as if the back of her head was being swamped by a dark wave: a powerful and barbaric rage she had never before known. Wulf shuddered under her hand. Connection ran from her to the dog and back again, the kind of deep connection she’d once, long ago, dreamed of having with Don, with her husband. But this electricity didn’t come from hardware or wireless or any sort of technology. It came from bone and blood and flesh, burning along Annie’s nerves like old, old fire. Annie was Wulf, the Wulf whose ancestors had coursed wolves on the Russian steppes, the Wulf with the rat in his jaws, even as she was also the rat itself. She was the substrate, the microcode, the starting point.

  The deadbolt broke and the door burst open.

  It seemed to Annie—later, when she was only herself again—that the dog moved even before she spoke. “Kill!” she said.

  Wulf leaped, and got Don in mid-air.

  ACT ONE

  Nancy Kress has won one Hugo and four Nebulas, most recently for “Fountain of Age” (Asimov’s, July 2007). She is the author of twenty-six books, the latest of which is Steal Across the Sky (Tor, February 2009). Nancy spent the autumn of last year in Leipzig, Germany, teaching at the university there. Her SF course was organized around the concept of deliberately invented future societies. In “Act One,” a future society is also invented—although not by changing political and economic considerations. Other ways may be more effective . . .

  “To understand whose movie it is one needs to look not particularly at the script but at the deal memo.”

  —Joan Didion

  I eased down the warehouse’s basement steps behind the masked boy, one hand on the stair rail, wishing I’d worn gloves. Was this level of grime really necessary? It wasn’t; we’d already passed through some very sophisticated electronic surveillance, as well as some very unsophisticated personal surveillance that stopped just short of a body-cavity search, although an unsmiling man did feel around inside my mouth. Soap cost less than surveillance, so probably the grime was intentional. The Group was making a statement. That’s what we’d been told to call them: “The Group.” Mysterious, undefined, pretentious. The stairs were lit only by an old-fashioned forty-watt bulb somewhere I couldn’t see. Behind me, Jane’s breath quickened. I’d insisted on going down first, right behind our juvenile guide, from a sense of—what? “Masculine protection” from me would be laughable. And usually I like to keep Jane where I can see her. It works out better that way.

  “Barry?” she breathed. The bottom of the steps was so shrouded in gloom that I had to feel my way with one extended foot.

  “Two more steps, Janie.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then we were down and she took a deep breath, standing closer to me than she usually does. Her breasts were level with my face. Jane is only five-six, but that’s seventeen inches taller than I am. The boy said, “A little way more.” Across the cellar a door opened, spilling out light. “There.” It had been a laundry area once, perhaps part of an apartment for some long-dead maintenance man. Cracked washtubs, three of them, sagged in one corner. No windows, but the floor had been covered with a clean, thin rug and the three waiting people looked clean, too. I scanned them quickly. A tall, hooded man holding an assault rifle, his eyes the expression of bodyguards everywhere: alert but nonanalytic. An unmasked woman in jeans and baggy sweater, staring at Jane with unconcealed resentment. Potential trouble there. And the leader, who came forward with his hand extended, smiling.

  “Welcome, Miss Snow. We’re honored.”

  I recognized him immediately. He was a type rampant in political life, which used to be my life. Big, handsome, too pleased with himself and his position to accurately evaluate either. He was the only one not wearing jeans, dressed in slacks and a sports coat over a black turtleneck. If he had been a pol instead of a geno-terrorist, he’d have maybe gotten as far as city council executive, and then would have run for mayor, lost, and never understood why. So this was a low-level part of the Group’s operation, which was probably good. It might lessen the danger of this insane expedition.

  “Thank you,” Jane said in that famous voice, low and husky and as thrilling off screen as on. “This is my manager, Barry Tenler.”

  I was more than her manager, but the truth was too complicated to explain. The guy didn’t even glance at me and I demoted him from city council executive to ward captain. You always pay attention to the advisors. That’s usually where the brains are, if not the charisma.

  Ms. Resentful, on the other hand, switched her scrutiny from Jane to me. I recognized the nature of that scrutiny. I’ve felt it all my life.

  Jane said to the handsome leader, “What should I call you?”

  “Call me Ishmael.”

  Oh, give me a break. Did that make Jane the white whale? He was showing off his intellectual moves, with no idea they were both banal and silly. But Jane
gave him her heart-melting smile and even I, who knew better, would have sworn it was genuine. She might not have made a movie in ten years, but she still had it.

  “Let’s sit down,” Ishmael said.

  Three kitchen chairs stood at the far end of the room. Ishmael took one, the bodyguard and the boy standing behind him. Ms. Resentful took another. Jane sank cross-legged to the rug in a graceful puddle of filmy green skirt.

  That was done for my benefit. My legs and spine hurt if I have to stand for more than a few minutes, and she knows how I hate sitting even lower than I already am. Ishmael, shocked and discerning nothing, said, “Miss Snow!”

  “I think better when I’m grounded,” she said, again with her irresistible smile. Along with her voice, that smile launched her career thirty-five years ago. Warm, passionate, but with an underlying wistfulness that bypassed the cerebrum and went straight to the primitive hind-brain. Unearned—she was born with those assets—but not unexploited. Jane was a lot shrewder than her fragile blonde looks suggested. The passion, however, was real. When she wanted something, she wanted it with every sinew, every nerve cell, every drop of her acquisitive blood.

  Now her graceful Sitting-Bull act left Ishmael looking awkward on his chair. But he didn’t do the right thing, which would have been to join her on the rug. He stayed on his chair and I demoted him even further, from ward captain to go-fer. I clambered up onto the third chair. Ishmael gazed down at Jane and swelled like a pouter pigeon at having her, literally, at his feet. Ms. Resentful scowled. Uneasiness washed through me.

  The Group knew who Jane Snow was. Why would they put this meeting in the hands of an inept narcissist? I could think of several reasons: to indicate contempt for her world. To preserve the anonymity of those who actually counted in this most covert of organizations. To pay off a favor that somebody owed to Ishmael, or to Ishmael’s keeper. To provide a photogenic foil to Jane, since of course we were being recorded. Any or all of these reasons would be fine with me. But my uneasiness didn’t abate.