Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  He started to run down the hill, across the black rock toward the water. Pebbles and scrub crunched under his bare feet. Then something stopped him. At first he thought it was the hard-to-breathe air slowing him down, but this was more like someone had grabbed his arm from behind without him even feeling it. He turned, and there stood a Tesslie.

  McAllister had described the alien over and over to the Six when they were younger: “In case you ever encounter one when I’m gone.” At first Pete had thought she meant gone to use a shit bucket, or maybe to sleep, but when he grew older he knew she meant if she died. The Tesslie looked just as she had described: not a being but a hard metal case like a bucket, four feet high and squarish, with no head or mouth or anything. The bucket-case floated a few inches above the ground. Whatever the Tesslies were, they were inside. Or else this was a “robot,” a machine like the battery-car from Jenna’s Grab, and the Tesslie was controlling it from someplace else. McAllister had said she didn’t know which, and now Pete didn’t know either.

  “Aaaarggghhhh!” Pete cried and tried to leap on it, knock it over, split it open as he had split Ravi’s mouth. This thing had killed his world!

  He couldn’t move. Not even a finger.

  The Tesslie said nothing. But all at once Pete found it much harder to breathe. He wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t doing anything. He woke inside one of the tiny featureless rooms in the far end of the Shell, and it turned out that, in their concern over Ravi’s injuries, no one even realized he’d been gone.

  JUNE 2014

  Julie sat in front of the young professor’s desk. She didn’t much like him, even though she’d only met him ten minutes ago. Pompous, self-satisfied, and perhaps even a little sleazy, or how else would he have the “top secret” information he claimed to possess? He’d made her sign a nondisclosure agreement, standard for her job, but still . . . . She didn’t like him.

  He said, “You come with top-level recommendations from people I’m not at liberty to name. You understand why not.”

  “Of course.” He was name-dropping by not dropping any names, and he was out to make his own reputation. Nonetheless, curiosity was rising in her about the nature of the project for which he wanted predictive algorithms. He was a researcher in biology, after all—not usually the stuff of intense secrecy unless you were involved in genetic engineering or pharmaceutical research, which he was not. She’d checked him out. Two published articles so far, both on the geographical distribution of weeds nobody ever heard of, or cared about since the weeds were not edible, threatening, invasive, or endangered. The statistical analyses in both articles struck her as sloppy. But he was old money, Harvard, Skull and Crossbones—all the things that gave one contacts in high places.

  His office was the usual thing for academics just starting to climb the university ladder: small, dark, crowded with metal shelves holding messy piles of papers, binders, folders, books. A scuffed wooden desk and two chairs. Still, he wasn’t housed in the building’s basement with the teaching assistants, his office had a window, and on the wall hung an expensively framed photo of young men crewing on the Charles River.

  Julie shifted on her chair. Beneath her maternity bra and thick sweater, she felt her breasts begin to leak. Alicia was a hungry little milk demon. Julie tried not to be away from her for more than a few hours at a time, for both their sakes.

  Dr. Geoffrey Fanshaw pursed his lips theatrically, studied her, and nodded several times, as if making a decision that clearly had been made before. With a flourish suited to a bad Shakespearean actor, he handed her a sheaf of papers, then rose to lock his office door.

  Ten minutes later Julie sat in shock, staring at him.

  “How did you come by this information?”

  “I told you that I can’t say.” He puffed with importance instead of what he should have felt: fear.

  “The data on the simultaneous appearance of the altered Klebsiella planticola on three separate continents—you’re sure of its authenticity?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And its accuracy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you personally visited any of these sites? The Connecticut one, maybe?”

  Annoyance erased his habitual smirk. “No, not yet. New Zealand and Brazil, of course, would be difficult to get to. And—”

  “But,” she burst out, unable to restrain herself, “what is anybody doing about this?”

  “I don’t know. My concern is publishing on-line with the predictive algorithms in place as soon as the story blows in the press. Which can’t be too long now—some smart journalist will get it. As soon as that happens, I want to be poised to publish in a professional journal with some prominence.”

  Julie heard what Fanshaw wasn’t saying: he wanted to be the instant go-to guy for the news shows, talk shows, sound-bite seekers. A professor, personable, well-connected, first to publish a serious analysis—he’d be a natural. He wanted the 60 Minutes interview and the Today show discussion, and to hell with the fact that in three widely separated locations around the planet—three known about now, who was to say there weren’t actually more—a deadly bacterial mutation was killing the roots of plants through an alcoholic by-product. Drowning them in booze. A bacterium found on the roots of virtually every plant on Earth except those growing in or near brackish water.

  Fanshaw said eagerly, “Can you do the statistical analysis?”

  She managed to get out, “Yes.”

  “By when? I need it, like, yesterday.”

  “I’ll start this afternoon.” The statistical part wasn’t hard. There must be mathematicians—not to mention biologists!—working frantically on this around the globe. Fanshaw was right—the press would get this very soon. And if—

  The fuller implications hit her.

  “If this isn’t natural—three locations for a naturally occurring identical mutation just doesn’t seem likely. Even an accidental release of a created genetic mutation would only happen in one place. So is this a terrorist attack?”

  “I don’t know.” For a second he looked almost concerned, but that washed away in a fresh surge of self-obsession. “As I said, Dr. Kahn, time is of the essence, I need those algorithms.”

  “Yes.” She stood, unable to stand him one minute more.

  On her way to the parking lot, breasts leaking milk with every step, she passed summer-term students hurrying to class, chatting on a low wall, sprawled on the grass over open books or laptops. Despite herself, she stopped to gaze at a flower bed, unable to look away. Pansies, impatiens, baby’s breath.

  Nearly every plant on Earth.

  Who? And in the name of every god she didn’t believe in—why?

  2035

  McAllister and Tommy McAllister were the only ones who believed Pete had been Outside. Tommy was angry because Pete hadn’t taken him along on the “adventure.” McAllister was tense with hope. “Tell me again,” she said.

  They sat alone in her room. Pete avoided looking at the curve of her belly. Again he recited everything that had happened, too frightened at what he himself had done to leave anything out, not even the cause of the fight with Ravi. But that wasn’t what she was interested in.

  “You saw bushes and grasses. Trees?”

  “No.”

  “Animals?”

  “No.”

  “And you could breathe.”

  “It was a little hard.”

  “Like you weren’t getting enough air?”

  “Yeah. But not very bad.” How could that be? There had been air all around him, blowing gently as it never did inside the Shell.

  She guessed the question he wasn’t asking. “You had trouble breathing because the air mix still isn’t right out there. Maybe there’s too much CO2—the destruction of the Earth’s forests would have really screwed up the oxygen-carbon dioxide balance. Maybe too many volcanic particles still, maybe toxins, maybe too much methane. I don’t know. I wasn’t an ecologist. But I think the atmosphere was becoming unb
reathable when the Tesslies put us into the Shell. And now you could breathe it.”

  “Does that mean they’ll let us out soon?”

  McAllister raised both hands, let them drop, screwed up her face. Her pregnancy had made her more emotional, which everyone had observed and Pete did not understand. Was that usual? “Pure foolishness, getting herself knocked up at her age,” Darlene had said. “Who does she think she is, Abraham’s Sarah?” Caity bit her lip and looked away every time McAllister waddled into a room. Pete was just glad he wasn’t female.

  McAllister said, “How should I know what the Tesslies will do?”

  Pete burst out, “I’ll kill them if I can!”

  She didn’t answer that; they both knew it was too ridiculous. Instead she said yet again, “And you couldn’t tell if the Tesslie was a living being inside a space suit or a robot.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She smiled. “Neither did I, the one time I saw one.”

  “How did it get here?”

  “I don’t know, dear heart. Until the Grab machinery appeared, I assumed they’d all left Earth after putting us Survivors in the Shell. After all, nobody had seen one for twenty years. But either they returned or else they were observing us all along.”

  Pete had known they watched him! Fucking bastards—

  McAllister said, “Thank you, Pete. You can go now, but later I want to talk to you and Ravi together.”

  “I’ve got Grab duty.”

  “Do you want someone else to take it?”

  “No.” He made himself ask, “Is Ravi all right?”

  “He will be.”

  She looked very tired. Pete said awkwardly, “Are you all right? With . . . everything?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just a little old to be doing this.”

  Well, you didn’t have to! But Pete didn’t say it. He blundered out and went to the Grab room.

  Staring at the inert Grab machinery, which might brighten but probably wouldn’t, Pete thought about his own questions. The air outside was breathable. It wasn’t really good, but it was breathable enough. What was “enough” ? There were bushes and grasses and—yes, he remembered now, wrenching the picture into his mind as if yanking up a pair of pants—berries. There had been red berries on some of the bushes. Almost he turned back to tell McAllister, but he didn’t want to face her again.

  He had no choice. Somewhere during his Grab duty she came in with Ravi. Immediately Pete wanted to be somewhere else. He got to his feet, scowling to cover his confusion.

  Ravi’s mouth was all swollen. His two top front teeth were broken off into jagged stumps. Pete had a moment of panic—how would Ravi eat? Well, he still had all his other teeth . . . . But his good looks were badly marred. Even without all the puffy swelling, Ravi was never again going to look like the handsome princes in the fairy-tale book.

  McAllister said, “Both of you men were at fault in this fight, but—” For a minute Pete didn’t listen, caught by her referring to them as “men.” Had McAllister ever done that before? When he heard her again, it was clear she was blaming him more than Ravi, because “. . . violence. Not only is it never needed to settle disputes, it damages the good of all and sets a terrible example for the children. Pete, you wouldn’t want Tommy or Petra to someday behave as you did today, would you?”

  Pete couldn’t imagine Petra behaving any way at all except smiling or wailing or kicking her fat little legs. Too far in the future. But he saw what McAllister meant, and hung his head.

  She was talking to Ravi now. “What you were doing, looking to start a fight with Pete because you were angry with me, is something all humans have to struggle against all the time. Do you understand, Ravi? Winning that struggle with ourselves will be a huge part of what lets us successfully restart humanity. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” Ravi said. Pete couldn’t tell if Ravi meant it or not. His voice came out mangled through the swollen mouth.

  “You two are brothers,” McAllister said passionately, “and I know that your biological parents, Richard and Emily and Samir, would not have wanted you to act the way you did today. But even more than brothers, you are members of this colony, with a mission that others have already struggled and died for. You must work together no matter what for our survival, or all those other deaths are wasted.”

  Ravi said something. McAllister didn’t understand the garbled words; she leaned forward and said, “What?” Ravi shook his head.

  But Pete had heard. Ravi had said, “Kill Tesslies.” That was what Ravi thought was their “mission.” And Pete did, too! His head snapped up to look at Ravi, who gazed back. Something passed between them, and all Pete’s animosity vanished. They had a joint mission: revenge. That was more important than who had sex with McAllister, who anyway wasn’t looking very attractive with her belly swollen in pregnancy and all those tired lines around her eyes.

  Ravi nodded. They understood each other. McAllister beamed.

  “Good,” she said. “Now shake hands.”

  They did, and Pete squeezed his brother’s hand. They were on the same side again. They would be killers together.

  McAllister said, “I’m so happy.”

  Both of them smiled at her.

  JUNE 2014

  Along the Euphrates river grew a strip of green: trees, grass, flowers. Away from the river the land turned more arid, dotted with scrub grazed on by sheep and goats. Here, not far from where Babylon had once stood, bacteria mutated on the tap long root of a plant.

  2035

  Pete and Ravi were now allies. Together they were going to get revenge for Earth. The first Tesslie they saw—and one had to show up eventually, after all Pete had seen one when he’d gone Outside!—they were going to kill.

  A week after the fight they sat in the clear-walled room, gazing out at the growing grasses in the black rock. “Those are taller than yesterday,” Ravi said.

  “Yeah,” Pete said, although to him the grasses looked exactly the same height. Pete felt obliged to agree with most of what Ravi said because with Ravi’s swollen mouth and broken teeth, Ravi’s words came out a little garbled. On the other hand, he still had his greater height and bigger muscles, which saved Pete from feeling as bad as he would otherwise. The fight had merely evened things up, he felt, the way Darlene “evened up” blankets when she folded them. The same for both sides. Still, Pete sometimes wished that he and Ravi had had the same father, not the same mother. Ravi’s build came from his father Samir, whom Pete could just remember, unlike both of his own parents.

  “When we find a Tesslie,” Ravi mumbled—it was always when, not if—“we should have a plan. I’ll grab it from behind and you—”

  “Wait a minute,” Pete said. “Is the Tesslie an alien inside a bucket-case or a robot?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes! If it’s a robot, then you hold it and I’ll find the battery case, open it, and pull out the batteries.”

  “Good, good,” Ravi said. “If it’s an alien inside a bucket-case, then I’ll hold it tight, you find the place where the bucket-case opens and unbutton or unzip or pry it apart or whatever. Then we can drag the bastard out and hit it with something.”

  “With what?” Pete said.

  Ravi considered. “We should have a weapon all ready. Hidden, but someplace where we can get at it quick when we need it. I know! Those metal-toed boots from that Grab!”

  Pete nodded enthusiastically. The boots were never worn; who wanted all that weight? In the Shell everyone went barefoot. Pete had never seen the point of them. But as a weapon . . .

  Ravi said, “We can kick the Tesslie with those boots and stomp on it until it’s all bloody!”

  Pete frowned. The vivid picture created by Ravi’s words didn’t look as appealing as before Ravi described it. Ravi, however, went on and on, spouting things they could do to the Tesslie.

  Partly to stop him, partly because the thought had been growing in him for some time, Pete said, “Ravi, I h
ave another idea.”

  “What?”

  “I think it would help us if we understood more about how Tesslie machinery works. In case, you know, the Tesslies are machinery. We should pick one piece of it and take it apart, examine it real good, then put it back together before McAllister even knows we did it.”

  Ravi’s mouth fell open, fully exposing his broken teeth. “Take it apart?”

  “Yes. For information about the Tesslies.”

  “What if . . . what if we can’t get the machinery back together again?”

  “We’ll be careful, go slow, look at each piece in great detail.” They were words Jenna had used about McAllister’s lesson in taking apart and cleaning McAllister’s precious microscope. Pete wasn’t allowed near the microscope, not since that business with the shit bucket and the broken glass slide.

  Ravi said, “Well, if you’re sure . . .”

  “I am,” said Pete, who wasn’t. But all at once the project seemed the most fascinating thing he’d ever done. Find out more about the Tesslies, the better to defeat them! He was like the Little Tailor in the fairy-tale book, using his brain to triumph over evil giants.

  “What machinery do we take apart?”

  “Well,” Pete said, thinking it out as he spoke, “there are only five Tesslie machines in the Shell. The Grab platform—”

  “We can’t risk that,” Ravi said.

  “—and the funeral slot and the fertilizer machine and the main waterfall and the disinfectant waterfall. I think the funeral slot.”

  “No, the fertilizer machine! Then if we can’t get it back together, we won’t have to do shit-bucket duty anymore!”

  “And the shit will just pile up inside the Shell,” Pete said. Sometimes Ravi didn’t think things through. “The funeral slot is better. Nobody else is sick enough to die. Anyway, I don’t think it will be as hard as the other machines. When I was inside the slot, I could see some pipes or something overhead before it got completely dark.”