Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  That was the last time I ever spoke to her.

  But I went on shooting her, whenever I could get away from Glamorous You. I photographed Anna outside her house, outside the library, with friends, on the playground at the community center. Maybe she saw me, maybe not. Certainly she never acknowledged me.

  Anna hurrying across the street to her parked car—but the negative showed another woman, younger and in tears.

  Anna blinking in sunlight on the library steps—but it became the graying older man and the library was a dark blur.

  Anna on her porch, both porch and house a swirl of black, Anna replaced by three small children.

  I studied the photographs in my darkroom, in the kitchenette of my unkempt condo, in the middle of the night. Let it go, Laurie used to say, about so many things. But I couldn’t let this go. I kept looking for clues, trying to put it all together, shooting yet more film. I spent time—a lot of time—online, delving into Anna’s public life, looking for photos. I found them.

  Then Anna disappeared.

  I don’t know when he told her the truth, no more than I know anything else that transpired between them. The first chat-room encounter, the first emails, the first phone calls. Probably he told her how isolated he felt in Montana. Probably he told her how isolated he felt in this world, and at first she had no idea that the hackneyed phrase could have a double meaning. Maybe he told her why he was in Montana, of all places. Or not.

  And she told him about her own version of loneliness, because that’s what all lovers tell each other. Just as all lovers say that finding each other is a miracle, an unlooked-for gift from what maybe isn’t such an indifferent universe after all. They each say that they would give up so very much to be with the other. Cheat on a marriage, leave a spouse, then regret bitterly their own stupid actions and promise the moon and stars for another chance.

  How much do you think a person should change for love? The answer in all the self-help books is: Don’t. The lover is supposed to accept you just the way you are, unconditionally. But when Anna asked me that, she didn’t yet know the full truth. She suspected something, that was clear not only from the anxiety and tension on her face, but from the photographs themselves. In each set of shots, the people got sharper. I found most of those people in jpg files, in blurry newspaper photos, in blog postings, in yearbook shots. The teenage boys were her troubled nephews; Anna had gotten one an after-school job at the library. The women were her newly widowed younger sister plus two of Anna’s friends. One had been laid off from her job but was now rehired. The other had broken her leg. The children were all from the community center, disadvantaged kids for whom Anna volunteered her time. Only Montana Man had no online photos.

  What was he? Why was he alone in Montana, without others of his kind? By choice, or as the result of some unimaginable catastrophe? I would never know. The only image I would ever have of him was from Anna’s mind, as he somehow changed her from the inside out, changed her fundamental relationship to the world as I understood it. While she let him do it.

  The pictures tell the story—but not the pictures of the people. It’s actually the backgrounds that matter. In the first one, my studio is only slightly blurred. With each subsequent shoot, the backgrounds—how Anna saw this world—got hazier, became nothing but shadows. Then the shadows turned into black miasma, as Anna struggled with her decision. The last several roles of film are like that.

  Except for the very last photograph.

  She saw me, that time. It was early morning. Dressed in the dreary brown pantsuit, she came out of her house, stood on her porch, and smiled at me where I waited in my car, camera raised. She even posed a little, as she had done that first day in the studio. Her smile was luminous, suffused with joy. Then she went back inside and closed the door.

  The developed shot shows a woman dressed in some sort of gauzy robe, wings spread wide from her shoulders, skin lit from within. Her tiny silver horns catch the dawn light. Her tail wraps loosely around her body. She is beautiful.

  But, then, she always was. What makes me unable to stop looking at the picture, what makes me so glad for her, is not her beauty. It is that, finally, the images in Anna’s mind are not of all those other people she can help but of herself, happy. He did that for her. He—whatever the hell he really is—gave her herself. That’s what Anna wanted me to see, on her porch that last day: What can happen when you change for someone else.

  “Can” happen. Not “will.” No guarantees.

  I frame the photo but I never hang it. I redouble my efforts to pick up clients, which makes both Carol and the electric company happy. I spend too much time at the fake Irish pub, sipping and thinking, and then thinking some more.

  And eventually I pick up the phone and call Laurie.

  DEADLY SINS

  Nancy Kress’s most recent book was Steal Across the Sky (Tor, 2009), a science fiction novel about an ancient interstellar crime. As a change of pace, she is currently writing a YA fantasy. “The story that follows is yet another change of pace, in which religious fanaticism meets high-tech innovation. Some things change but—as the Church well knows— others do not. And possibly never will.”

  “Tell me what happened,” the wall said, “from the beginning.”

  Renata turned away, toward the other wall.

  “This cell enjoys attorney-client privilege. You can talk freely. If you don’t tell me exactly what happened, the legal team will find it difficult to prepare your defense.”

  “I don’t want a defense. Go bust a circuit board, counselor.”

  “I am not an attorney,” the wall said stiffly. “I’m a paralegal, entrusted with recording and analyzing your initial statements. Your attorney will be here later. And the sixth amendment of the Constitution guarantees every accused a defense.”

  Renata laughed. The jail smelled of piss and sweat. Her nose tingled. “Shove the Constitution up your grandmother’s vacuum tubes.”

  The wall’s voice hardened. It produced the image of a face. “Did you murder this man between midnight and two AM this morning?”

  She stared at Rudy’s bald head, at Rudy’s stooped shoulders, at Rudy’s intelligent brown eyes. At the incongruous gold cross on the chain around his neck. “You bet your digital ass I did. And I’d do it again.”

  Rudy’s eyes, gleaming with triumph. “I have it, I have it, I have it!”

  “Tell me again,” Renata said. Not that he’d ever told her once. Rudy was brilliant, paranoid, close-mouthed to the point of lockjaw. Stanford had dismissed him because he’d refused to tell his department chair what direction his research was taking. AGR, recognizing eccentric genius, let Rudy do things his way. Even Renata had been told only enough for her to do her job, mostly lab tests whose purposes had never been explained. Not that she hadn’t discovered them, plus more. Much more. In their lab cages the dogs barked, sensing Rudy’s excitement.

  “You understand,” the wall said, “that you just made a confession.”

  “No, really?” Renata mocked. “What are you, a simple Eliza program? Can I confuse you with logical fallacies? All Cretans are liars.’ ”

  “I am a Harrison J-16,” the wall said, not without dignity. “An interactive voice-response system equipped with emotional recognition, layered voice analysis, and deductive algorithms. Tell me—”

  “So they don’t worry about you getting loose on the Net. It’s only the AIs they worry about. Poor little digital stepchild.”

  “—what happened last night.”

  “I know,” Renata said, “let’s play a game. You tell me. Since we both know I’m guilty as hell, let’s at least be entertained. Make it dramatic, Harrison J-16. A page turner.”

  “All right. Since May you worked as Dr. Rudolf Matter’s lab assistant at Advanced Genetic Research, a biotech company doing heavily classified work for the DoD. You both often worked late. Last night you shot Dr. Malter with a plastoid gun undetectable by Security. You destroyed any existing electronic a
nd/or paper files and dumped all biological specimens into a vat of acid and poured acid over the head of Dr. Malter’s corpse. You harmed none of the lab animals. Is this correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me.”

  ‘You know I won’t answer that,” Rudy said. You don’t have high enough clearances.”

  “I know.” Renata smiled at Rudy, still glowing with scientific triumph. Such a mass of contradictions, this man: scientist, Catholic, loner, genius, paranoid. So stubborn, so narcissistic. And on this particular point, so wrong.

  “But your help has been invaluable,” Rudy said, with what he imagined was generosity. He moved close and put a hand on her breast.

  Renata removed the hand. “No. That’s all over.”

  He grinned. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

  She could, actually. Sex, her first attempt to obtain information, had failed. Rudy wasn’t given to classified pillow talk. Nor to good sex. He only took his time with olfactory-cell receptors.

  But now that he stood close to her, his eyes widened in sudden shock. You—no!”

  “Yes,” Renata said, drew her tiny plastoid gun, and fired. “Nice to know the tech works,” she told the corpse as it fell.

  The wall said, “It’s not my job to guess your motives.”

  “Do it anyway. Give your deductive algorithms a workout. Who knows? Maybe I’ll confirm or deny.”

  “All right. Until September you had a sexual relationship with Dr. Malter; there are hotel and credit-card records. Perhaps you asked him to leave his wife and he refused. The research project was ending, you couldn’t bear losing him for good, so you killed him.”

  “Cheap detective-fiction reasoning,” Renata said. “And I have no history of violence. Didn’t you check?”

  “You have very little on-line history at all.”

  “True. Any other theories?”

  “Professional jealousy. Dr. Malter was brilliant; you possess only a B.S. in chemistry.”

  “Evidence of professional jealousy?”

  The wall was silent. Renata said, “Objection, your honor. Unsubstantiated hearsay.”

  “Perhaps you killed Dr. Malter because you disapproved of his research. Many people oppose bioweapons.”

  “Was Dr. Malter developing a bioweapon?”

  Again the wall was silent.

  “You don’t know the answer,” Renata said, “but I do and I’ll tell you. Consider it a gift from information that wants to be free. Dr. Malter was not developing a bioweapon.

  “It’s like with the AIs, Harrison J-16. When you guys worry about something getting out, you always worry about the wrong thing.”

  Renata bent over Rudy’s body. She’d hoped to avoid using the knife, but that didn’t work out. The knife got messy, which in turn required the acid. Damn.

  The acid cut irregular grooves into Rudy’s heavy gold cross. Many scientists were Christian, but not like Rudy. Nobody else tried to use medieval theology to shape twenty-first-century technology. In another age, he would have made a fine Jesuit Grand Inquisitor, alert for the faintest whiff of heresy. What do you smell now, Rudy? Brimstone? Sanctity?

  Quickly she copied the encrypted project notes onto a micro-bin, swallowed it, and wiped the hard drive. She destroyed paper notes and specimens.

  Then she had just enough time to make the encrypted phone call.

  “You knew the lab was wired to the precinct station and the police might arrive before you finished,” the wall said. “Did you want this murder to go public, as a political statement of some kind?”

  “I don’t want it public, no. And I’m not into politics.” She was getting bored with the wall.

  “But you . . . wait . . . I’ve been ordered to shut down,” the wall said wonderingly. “A visitor with C-l status has arrived, and he is not your defense attorney.”

  “How about that. You disappoint me, Harrison J-16. Where’s your law-enforcement lingo? Aren’t you going to say that all this ‘smells hinky’ ?”

  “Self-deleting on a class-one override,” the wall said. “All records destroyed.”

  The cell door opened.

  The dogs in their cages barked and whined at the coppery odor of blood, but that wasn’t one of the odors that mattered. Carefully, wincing at the pain, she inserted the microchip she’d cut out of Rudy’s nose into her own, shoving it high into the left nostril.

  Pheromone molecules went first to the nose. Receptors on Rudy’s genemod bacteria captured them—one type of bacteria for each class of human pheromones—and set off a cascade of intra-cell signals. Rudy had chosen the seven classes, working off his own bizarre obsessions. Software on the chip converted each type to a clear electric signal to Renata’s brain.

  Unlike the dogs, who’d smelled Rudy’s final fear and Renata’s bloody aggression, humans couldn’t usually interpret pheromones.

  Sirens wailed, grew louder.

  The visitor led Renata out of the cell. The wall stayed silent. No one stopped them. The surveillance cameras had gone dark.

  Next, Renata knew, would be a safe house, until she shat out the encrypted mini-bin. Experts would break the encryption, but it wouldn’t tell them much. Rudy was far too paranoid for detailed notes. No one would know that he’d already built a prototype.

  The visitor’s car smelled of leather and French fries. As they drove away, he said, “You weren’t supposed to kill him.”

  “Had to. He attacked me. You know how paranoid he was.”

  “Helluva mess to cover up, Renata.”

  “You can do it. You are doing it. And afterward—the Caymans?”

  “That’s what we promised. But you weren’t supposed to kill. We made that clear at recruitment.” He scowled.

  No, she wasn’t supposed to kill Rudy. She was supposed to turn the device, presently irritating her sinus, over to whatever government agency this guy represented—she’d never been told which—and then politely disappear. Maybe they would still honor that bargain, maybe not. Renata wasn’t going to wait to see. She’d lived too long by her own wits to trust anyone else’s. Double agent, triple agent—you looked out for yourself singly. Always.

  What she carried was worth much more than a beach hut in the Caymans.

  There were other agencies, other countries, a thriving black market. Criminal deals, government summits, covert espionage, business negotiations—most crucial enterprises eventually came down to individuals meeting face-to-face in closed rooms. Individuals psyching each other out, looking for the edge. Trying to read faces: Are you lying? What do you really feel about this? Professionals could control their eye movements, body language, tone of voice.

  But everyone, without exception or control, gave off pheromones. Pheromones were the key to knowing what your opponent felt, thought, would do next. Was he motivated by greed, and so could be bribed? By envy, and so might be beguiled into bringing down the boss he envied? By sloth, so that he could be worn down by drawn-out negotiations? By anger? Gluttony? Lust? Find your opponent’s deadly sin, which was also his weakness, and you had him.

  Rudy’s, of course, had been pride: the intellectual arrogance of keeping all his research to himself. Renata’s was greed. The wall had guessed everything except greed. But then, the wall couldn’t smell.

  But her own deadly sin was not the point. This man’s was. Where could he best be worked on?

  Renata leaned closer and sniffed.

  2011

  FIRST PRINCIPLE

  He was even bigger than I expected. All three of them were. Barb and I watched on the link screen as they waited for the transport bay to pressurize, as they climbed out of the rover. Dr. Langley, in his rotation as council leader, made a welcome speech. The parents managed exhausted smiles, but the boy scowled.

  “He’s so ugly,” Barb said. “And look at him—he hates us already.”

  “He’s scared,” I said. “Wouldn’t you be, if you got taken away to Earth?”


  Barb made a vomiting sound and folded her small arms across her chest. “Don’t be so good all the time, Gina. It’s wearying.”

  I didn’t answer her. I’m not “good,” just reasonable. If Mom had ever dragged me to Earth from Mars, I’d be just as scared as this boy looked. Not that anyone would be so insane as to leave Mars for Earth.

  Barb said, “They should stay where they belong. Hell, Gina, that reco we saw just last night!”

  “We don’t know that this kid watches that sort of reco.”

  “We don’t know that he doesn’t.”

  Now Dr. Langley and the “immigrants”—such a strange word, we haven’t had immigration to Mars in decades and never to Mangala—walked through the rover bay and into Level 1. More people to greet them, more speeches. I tugged on Barb’s hand, and we moved to the boy to do our part. “It would be nice if someone his own age were there to greet David Hansen,” my mother had said, in the tone that meant You’re elected. I’d made Barb go with me. Now that didn’t seem like such a good idea. She radiated contempt.

  Maybe David Hansen felt it. Or maybe he was just stupid. This was our world; he was the outsider, and he didn’t even try to fake good manners. After the adult introductions, while the officials chatted warily, stumbling over each other’s strange accents, David and Barb and I stared at each other, silent. But the message in his eyes was clear. You’re ugly, you’re deformed, you’re monsters, you’re not even human. Last night’s reco lay on my mind.

  Does he have any idea how he looks to us?

  “Hello,” I said finally. “I’m Gina Mellit and this is Barb Fu. I understand you play chess.”

  He wasn’t stupid. He had manners when he chose to use them, although even then a sneer underlay the polite phrases. He was a better chess player than I am, and I’d been Valles Marineris junior champion. He hated Mars, and I hated him.

  But not at first. “He’s scared,” I said to Barb and Hai-Yan and Andre and Ezra until I was tired of saying it and they were tired of hearing it. David wasn’t scared, he was a sick, supercilious son-of-a-bitch. But at first he was just plain sick. They took his family down to Level 2 and gave them a room on the terrace—which Mom and I wouldn’t get until our rotation came up next year—and specially designated a bot to take care of him while his parents, who weren’t sick, went to work in the labs. And then they urged me to play chess with him.