Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  The CDC. That usually meant disease, even plague. Hannah gripped the doorknob more tightly. “What’s this about?”

  “Are you Annabel Sevley?”

  “I’m Hannah Sevley, her sister and legal guardian.” Not true, guardianship had never been transferred from their mother and Annabel had turned eighteen, but you got more information that way. “What’s this about?”

  “An investigation that the CDC is conducting.”

  She wasn’t going to get more unless she let them inside. “First I’m going to verify your credentials.”

  The man smiled. Hannah closed the door, made the call, and opened it again. Her belly felt light, as if it might float up into her throat. But she kept her voice crisp, professional.

  “Sit down. Then tell me why you want to see Annabel.”

  He gazed at her, and Hannah saw the moment he decided that she wasn’t taking any evasive bullshit. He said, “We’ve been running an investigation on a condition spreading throughout children in the Boston area. We think your sister may be a carrier.”

  “A ‘condition,’ not a disease? What condition? And why do you suspect Annabel?”

  “She’s the only person we can identify who’s been in contact with all the affected children.”

  “Circumstantial evidence.”

  “Yes, of course.” His tone was soothing, which infuriated Hannah. “But we would like to talk to Annabel.”

  “She’s not here. You can talk to me, I’m not only her sister but also her lawyer.”

  Paul Apley shifted his weight on the shabby sofa, which Hannah had been intending to replace but hadn’t had time. “She doesn’t need a lawyer, Ms. Sevley, and she’s not being accused of anything. But if she is a transmitter of this condition—”

  “Which is what?”

  The other doctor, the snotty-looking woman, spoke for the first time. “Month-long infant coma with no after-effects, similar and perhaps identical to the one your sister suffered after she was pulled from that mountain crevasse fifteen years ago.”

  Hannah said evenly, “Annabel had been underground for nearly three days. She almost lost a toe to frostbite. Trauma and injury caused the coma, the doctors told my parents so at the time, and Annabel came out of the coma with no lasting effects whatsoever.”

  “I believe you,” Paul Apley said. If he had smiled at her while he said it, or looked into her eyes, Hannah would have thrown them both out of the apartment. But instead he ran his hand distractedly through his hair, and his face had the scrunched, eye-unfocused look of a man thinking intently. He wasn’t trying to charm Hannah; he was searching for answers.

  What if something was genuinely wrong with Annabel?

  Hannah said, “Please tell me about this alleged condition. What you know for sure, what you suspect, and what evidence you have linking it to Annabel.”

  He did, and Hannah listened harder than she ever had to any deposition, any criminal confession, any string of precedents that she might have to undermine or disprove.

  * * *

  Annabel insisted on going home. Her mother protested and argued and wept, but in the end she had come up with money for a taxi. Her mother’s finances were a mystery to Annabel, although she might have inherited something from Annabel’s father, who had died a year ago. Or had his second wife gotten it all?

  At any rate, there was a taxi and Annabel, wrapped in an old coat of her mother’s that was too big for her, plus three layers of socks because all of Julia’s shoes were too small, climbed out of the cab in downtown Boston. She let herself into the apartment to find two strangers sitting with Hannah.

  Her first impression was amazement that Hannah, that workaholic, was actually sitting, and with visitors instead of her laptop or tablet. Annabel’s second thought was that maybe the man was a boyfriend. But then, why the girl? She was too old to be his daughter; she looked about Hannah’s age, and the man in his early forties.

  “Annabel,” Hannah said, in a tone she didn’t recognize, “this is Dr. Paul Apley and Dr. Emily Zimmer. They’re from the CDC. They want to ask you some questions, and as your lawyer, I want you to answer only when I say you may.”

  Annabel blinked. Lawyer? CDC? Was there. . .oh God, was there a plague? Was Hannah infected?

  “Don’t be frightened, Annabel,” Dr. Apley said, at the same moment that Hannah said, “Where are your shoes? And why are you wearing Mom’s old coat? Haven’t you been at work?”

  Annabel said, “Could I please have a cup of hot tea?”

  * * *

  The doctors told their story, and Annabel told hers. The incident in the snowy field was quickly disposed of; Annabel hadn’t wanted her mother to call the police and her mother hadn’t, not wanting strangers in the house, and after all Annabel hadn’t been hurt and the cops probably wouldn’t ever catch the punks anyway. Annabel left out what she had experienced while looking up at the stars. Hannah would just say that spiritual feelings were archaic wish-fulfillment.

  Then the doctors talked. It became, Annabel saw, a kind of contest, with both the doctors and Hannah trying to obtain as much information as possible, while giving away as little as possible.

  Despite that, Annabel finally realized that the doctors were saying that she had somehow caused babies at day-care centers to go into a coma.

  “I didn’t!”

  “Not intentionally,” Dr. Apley said. “We know that. But Annabel, if you’re a carrier, a person who is immune to the condition herself but passing it on, then surely you’d want to know that?”

  “Well, yes,” Annabel said.

  Hannah scowled at her. “We are in no way admitting that Annabel is a carrier.”

  “I said ‘if,’” Dr. Apley said.

  Annabel said, “But how did I get this. . .‘condition’?”

  “We don’t know,” Dr. Apley said.

  Dr. Zimmer said, “Most emerging diseases are zoonotic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the pathogen lives in a different animal but has jumped species to infect humans.”

  Dr. Apley said, “It may be premature to say that. Annabel, we’d like to run some tests.”

  Hannah said, “Annabel has had a physical every year of her life. Nothing abnormal has ever been found.” This wasn’t strictly true but Annabel, still shocked, didn’t correct Hannah.

  Dr. Apley said, “Physicals are gross-level checks for infections, abnormalities, and the kinds of diseases that leave markers in blood and urine. I doubt that Annabel has ever had so much as an fMRI since she was a child—have you, Annabel?”

  Annabel said nothing; she wasn’t sure what an fMRI was.

  “What we want to do is far more subtle and thorough. Our advanced tests won’t harm Annabel, won’t hurt, and will carry no cost to you. And, Ms. Sevley, if we truly suspect she is a danger to public health, I know that youknow that we can get a court order for quarantine.”

  “You don’t have anything that comes close to probable cause.”

  “I can get the court order under Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 111.”

  “You mean,” Hannah said, “that you can find a judge who’s either such a hyper-rationalist that he holds medicine in holy awe, or such an Age of Imagination sympathizer that he doesn’t want to take a chance she’s possessed by a demon.”

  Hannah and Dr. Apley stared at each other. Neither blinked. Annabel said, “I will have the tests.”

  Hannah turned to her. “Annabel—”

  “No, this is my decision. I want to know. If I put babies into a coma, I want to know, even though they’re all okay now.” To her horror, tears overflowed.

  Dr. Zimmer gave a quick roll of her eyes. Hannah clenched her fists. Dr. Apley passed Annabel a tissue. And there came over Annabel a huge, tidal-wave-sized feeling that she should not do this: No no no no no no.

  She pushed down the feeling. She had to know. She, Annabel.

  * * *

  The tests were carried out at Massachus
etts General, where Annabel had a quarantine room “as a precaution.” Hannah, subjected to a much smaller array of tests, insisted on staying with her as much as possible, on calling frequently when she couldn’t, and on repeating endlessly that Annabel should say nothing to anybody. This made for a boring three days when Annabel wasn’t being scanned, prodded, sampled, or examined. So many bits of her were taken away for analysis that she marveled anything was left.

  At night, sleeping in her hospital bed with Hannah in a cot across the room, Annabel dreamed. She had always had vague, highly colored dreams, and now they became even vaguer and more highly colored. She usually woke with the strong feeling that she’d been somewhere else, someplace constantly shifting and speeding and busy, someplace utterly alien and yet familiar.

  Annabel sought information on the Internet about the children she’d cared for. Usually there was a spate of newborn pictures, then nothing. She had only been working in day care for a year. The children had no Internet presence yet, and the parents were usually poor. The exceptions, two of them, dated from her brief job at the Harvard University Day Care Center, where Annabel had loved the kids (she always loved the kids) but not the parents. Two babies, James Whitman and Parminder Bhatnagar, had fallen into comas after Annabel left. Parents, grandparents, and siblings had blogged about it. Everybody continued to blog and to post pictures, and both children were now adorable and healthy toddlers. It was ridiculous to think anything was wrong with them.

  It was ridiculous to think anything was wrong with herself.

  Wasn’t it?

  * * *

  The entity knew what was happening. Pieces of itself removed—not many, but not good. And nothing it could do to stop it. Its only defense so far was clouds of soothing pheromones. But changes were underway.

  On each of the host’s nerve cells sat sacs with membranes made of fat, sugars, and protein. The sacs stored various molecules, each one a nitrogen atom surrounded by two hydrogen atoms tethered to the molecule by a short, distinctive chain of carbons. The entity had learned that these monoamines could be released by dissolving the sacs, modulating the activity of the brain.

  In addition, each of these monoamines set off cascades of interlocking molecular interactions throughout the entire host. So did other substances stored in different tissues. The cascades could be triggered, intensified, or interrupted at various points. The entity now knew enough about the host, and the host’s environment, to create mechanisms that would do that, and the raw materials were all to hand.

  The entity did not “think” this, in human terms. Its consciousness was too different. But consciousness there was, aimed at long-term survival, and capable of action focused to that universal, all-important end.

  It needed to protect the host from the outside world.

  Urgently it set to work.

  * * *

  “A parasite,” the doctors said. “Of an unknown type we’ve never seen before.”

  Hannah reached for Annabel’s hand, but Annabel looked calm, if pale. Actually, Hannah felt calmer than she would have expected. She attributed this to her courtroom experience. Her recorder was on, and her wrister ready for notes. She said quietly, “Is it in any way life-threatening?”

  One of the doctors—there were two from Mass General in addition to Paul and Emily—said, “Not that we can tell. Annabel is in perfect health.”

  Paul said, “You have to understand, both of you, that we’re in the dark here. The thing is, the parasite is an entirely different type from anything known. It’s carbon-based, certainly, but it seems to contain neither DNA nor RNA, and what it does seem to contain are some unknown structures along with some analogues to human cells. It resides mostly, but not exclusively, on nerve and brain cells and in the cerebrospinal fluid. An MRI shows nodularity along nerves. Electron microscopes show a chain of bead-like structures with motile flagella, but not like anything ever observed before. They won’t stain properly or—”

  “Wait,” Hannah said, more sharply, “In her brain?”

  “Yes.”

  Annabel’s fingers tightened on Hannah’s. Annabel said, “Will it. . .will it change my brain?”

  “We don’t know.” Paul ran his hand through his hair in the distracted gesture that Hannah had found herself watching for. “Parasites are. . .can be. . .tricky.”

  “I know,” Annabel said, surprising Hannah. “I’ve been reading about them while I’m here. There’s one you can get from cat shit that makes rats unafraid of cats, makes them actually attracted to the smell of cat pee, so that the cat can eat the rat and the parasite can get back into the cat.”

  “T. gondii,” Paul said, looking unhappy.

  “And it affects people, too,” Annabel continued steadily. “A lot of research says that it makes humans more willing to take risks by cranking up the production of dopamine. Flu makes people become more sociable while it’s in the contagious stage, because the flu wants to be spread around to—”

  “Flu doesn’t ‘want’ anything,” Emily said disdainfully. “It’s a virus.”

  Annabel continued as if Emily hadn’t spoken. “—infect as many people as possible. People in the last stages of syphilis crave sex more, to also spread the disease. Syphilis affects dopamine, too, like the cat-shit parasite. And like N-caps.”

  Hannah said, “Annie, sweetie, I don’t think N-caps have anything to do with this.”

  Annabel looked hard at Paul. “Did I pass this parasite on to babies? Have you tested any of the kids that went into a coma?”

  “Not yet. You’re first, so we know what we’re looking for.”

  “But you will test them?”

  “All those whose parents agree.” Emily had already started the visits to obtain permission. “Meanwhile, Annabel, it might be best if you remain here in the hospital.”

  “No,” Hannah said swiftly. Here she was on firm ground. “By Chapter 111, Section 6, quarantine can only be imposed if a disease is ‘declared dangerous to the public health’ by the Public Health Commissioner. Annabel’salleged parasite has not been so declared and does not meet the criteria to be so declared.”

  Paul said mildly, “I think it does, Ms. Sevley. The condition is communicable, Annabel poses a risk of infecting others, and the commissioner will issue a declaration if the CDC tells her to.”

  “You would have to demonstrate a significant risk to others, and you haven’t even got hard medical evidence that those other children are carrying the alleged parasite.”

  “Nonetheless, the Commissioner can take any quarantine action that she ‘deems advisable for the protection of public health.’ Massachusetts grants the PHD pretty broad discretionary powers, as you know.”

  Hannah’s respect for Paul rose, along with her dislike. “You need a magistrate to issue an ex parte motion to take Annabel.”

  “I can get one.”

  “If you—”

  “Wait,” Annabel said. “Everybody, just wait!”

  Everybody waited except Hannah, who said, “Don’t say anything, Annabel.”

  Annabel ignored her sister. “Dr. Apley, if I stay at our apartment and don’t go to work—don’t go anywhere at all, just stay home—is that enough?”

  Home isolation was actually what Hannah had been ultimately bargaining for, but Annabel had gotten there first. You never asked directly for what you really wanted; you began by showing that you were willing to fight, so that when you did compromise, the other side thought it had won something. But Annabel didn’t know that legal strategy.

  Neither, apparently, did Paul Apley. He said, “Yes, I think that would be all right, as long as you’re monitored for compliance.”

  “Maybe I could wear one of those ankle bracelet things,” Annabel said, once again giving away the store before negotiation. Hannah stifled her sigh.

  “Okay,” Paul said. “Annabel, I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  “No,” Annabel agreed. “But now I want to ask some questions. Will you answer them
truthfully?”

  “Yes,” Paul said, even while the two physicians shifted their weight uneasily on the sofa, and Emily frowned.

  Annabel said, “Can you get this parasite out of me?”

  Hannah held her breath. Paul hesitated, but he answered. “Probably not. Nerve-attached and brain-diffused conditions are notoriously difficult to treat. Anything strong enough to kill them also kills the patient.”

  “Did I infect Hannah?”

  “No. Her tests show no sign of the organisms.”

  “Will this parasite eventually kill me?”

  “Annabel, we have no idea what it will do. But my best guess is no. Parasites that kill their host also kill themselves. You’ve had this a long time, and you’re in excellent health. I don’t think it will harm you, or at least I can’t see any evolutionary advantage it would gain by doing so.”

  “You said it’s in my nerves and brain. Is it influencing my behavior?”

  He threw out both arms, palms upwards. “How would I know? I don’t know what your behavior would have been like without it.”

  Hannah blinked, unused to such honesty from the opposition.

  “Well,” Annabel said, with a sudden and completely unexpected smile, “if I start acting weird, you probably can’t distinguish it from everybody else out there.”

  Paul laughed. Hannah, to her own shocked surprise, laughed along with him.

  * * *

  The entity, utilizing all the resources of its own peculiar collective mind, made swift progress in controlling Annabel’s concentrations of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenalin, cortisol, and much more. It would not allow the host to be endangered again.

  * * *

  VII: April, 2030

  Spring again in Boston. Daffodils, hyacinths, tulips were in full bloom, roses in bud. Annabel grew flowers in pots on the third-floor apartment balcony, so many flowers that there was room for only one chair, which she sat in for many hours each day with her tablet on her lap. Hannah had resumed her punishing work schedule, although she tried to get home as often as possible. It wasn’t very often.