Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  No. Not only herself. Her termites were using her. Could she maybe use them, as well? In some way besides spitting and getting furious?

  That would be only fair, wouldn’t it?

  * * *

  Clearly, FBI Special Agent Goldberg thought they were both crazy. Hannah, a lawyer, and Paul, a CDC researcher, and he believed neither of them. Ordinarily this would have filled Hannah with indignation, but she was too fearful about Annabel for it to penetrate. If that bitch Emily had betrayed Annabel to the SLA for money—

  And Hannah had to make the call to their mother.

  Having no patience with her mother’s self-indulgent hiding out, Hannah had not seen her in well over a year. But Julia had a right to know that her daughter was in danger. All at once there came to Hannah the image of her mother, fingers bleeding from tearing at unyielding rock, singing to tiny Annabel trapped in the crevasse. Singing and singing until her throat was too hoarse to bring out another note. . .

  “I have to call my mother,” she said.

  “What’s her address?” Agent Goldberg said. “When do you think she last saw Annabel?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He listened in on the call, for which Hannah turned her back to both him and Paul. They didn’t need to see her face. “Mother? It’s Hannah.”

  “Hannah! How are you?” And then, “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Annabel. She’s. . .missing.”

  Julia’s voice tautened. “What do you mean, ‘missing’?”

  “She was kidnapped. Last night. The FBI is on the case. They’ll find her, they’re very good at—”

  “Why would anybody kidnap Annabel? She doesn’t have any money! Or. . .is this some kind of sex thing?”

  “No, no, Mom, nothing like that. The FBI thinks Annabel isn’t going to be hurt or touched. It’s more a . . .well, it’s complicated.”

  Julia said, “Where are you? I’ll catch the next train.”

  * * *

  Paul talked to the FBI agent, who became two agents, and then four. The agents called the CDC Director through encrypted satellites. Keith was returned from X-ray, allowed to talk to Paul and Hannah and Goldberg for a few minutes, and then sequestered by his nurses. The whole circus moved to the Boston field office. An FBI medical expert arrived there and Paul had to begin his story all over again. It was clear the woman didn’t believe him.

  Annabel’s mother arrived, terrified and bewildered. Agents interviewed her, and then she was taken away by Hannah.

  More phone calls. Paul explained over and over the large number of things he had no answer to, including: the origin of the microbes that had turned Annabel into a symbiote; whether the other infected children would become like Annabel; how the parasites could be carbon-based but have a genetic system different from DNA; why they were here; why no one besides Keith, a twenty-year-old ex-addict, had ever witnessed the alleged spitting in which alleged toxins had allegedly killed a man. “Don’t you understand—these are things we were researching!” he said in frustration, at which point they began asking him the same questions yet again.

  However, they wouldn’t answer his questions. Not until he said to Agent Goldberg, “Have you found Emily? For questioning?”

  He said, “She left the country yesterday on a plane to Greece.”

  Greece. The new home for terrorists, criminals hiding out, illegal weapons development, and borderline banking houses. Ever since its economy had collapsed into total chaos, Greece had been the new destination of choice for those who wished to not be found. The government, the most corrupt in Europe, cooperated, if sufficiently bribed. Greece, once the cradle of Western civilization.

  He said, “Do we have extradition treaties with Greece?”

  Agent Goldberg snorted.

  Another man approached Paul. “Dr. Apley, I’m Dr. Fuentes from the National Security Agency. I’d like to talk to you about why the CDC was not monitoring and quarantining these plague carriers.”

  “We were. And it’s not a plague.”

  “And you think it has some actual monetary potential to an organization as anti-science as the SLA?” Fuentes’s eyebrows had raised so high they threatened his hairline.

  “Potentially, yes.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Paul began yet again.

  * * *

  Lying on her bed in the claustrophobic cabin of the rocking boat, Annabel started by visualizing Mother Moran.

  She tried to get a picture in her mind as complete as possible: the sari, the medieval headdress, the jewelry from three different belief systems, the wrinkled and liver-spotted brown face. Then she tried to hold that picture, and only that picture, in her mind. It was difficult and exhausting. An old joke of Keith’s from when they were kids came to her mind: Try not to think about a pink elephant. She’d forgotten the punch line, but she remembered vividly that all she had been able to think of was pink elephants.

  Could her termites see what she imagined? Maybe not, but she kept on, adding memories of how Mother Moran smelled and talked. She remembered Paul’s term for the part of her brain that focused attention: My cortex should be smoking by now.

  Nothing happened. Her stupid termites didn’t know what she meant.

  Okay, focus on rage. When she’d been in danger before, she’d suddenly been strong enough to knock down a grown man. So become furious, focus on killing Mother Moran. . ..

  Annabel knew she couldn’t do it, not unless the demented old woman was holding a gun and about to fire. A spell wouldn’t do it. Annabel just didn’t have enough belief in spells.

  All right, now what?

  Put her body in danger. That’s what the termites cared about.

  She began to strain so hard against her bonds that the skin chafed, and then bled. She wriggled her body to the almost-sitting-up position in which Mother Moran had fed her, and banged her head hard against the headboard. The more she banged, the more pain she inflicted on herself, the angrier she got—at the termites. They were the reason she was in this condition! They were the ones that had wrecked her life and injured Keith and gotten her kidnapped!

  Fury mounted in her, and blood stained the sheets.

  * * *

  The host was destroying itself!

  The entity raced to flood it with pleasure monoamines, so that it would stop. If necessary, it could knock out the host to make it halt its dangerous, counter-productive behavior. The organism raced to release the necessary toxin from the thick-membraned sacs where they were stored—but then it halted.

  The host was trying to communicate.

  Instructions coded into the entity’s equivalent of DNA, dormant until this perception occurred, were activated. Chemical and electrical signals raced among the web of cells, by now fully half as numerous as Annabel’s neural network, and just as complex. This, the entity now understood, was why it had been sent from home. Communication must occur, and all the networking necessary to interpret Annabel’s intent was present. Years of monitoring optical, cortical, hippocampal, parietal, and all the other nerves of Annabel’s brain had prepared the entity for this. It did not “see” what Annabel thought, any more than a computer “sees” the program put into it. But it could draw conclusions, however untested, from Annabel’s actions, the firing pattern of her neurons, and the chemicals produced by her body.

  The host no longer wished to lie on this particular surface with these particular bracelets on its appendages.

  The entity washed dopamine through Annabel’s nucleus accumbens, While she was still giggling, it oozed acids, safely packaged into the same thick membranous sacs as the toxins in her saliva, through microtubules in her skin. The sacs emerged from her wrists, interacted with oxygen in the air, and dissolved. The acids ate slowly through the ropes.

  Ten minutes later Annabel’s brain had been cleansed of its ecstatic stimulant and her limbs were free.

  * * *

  Paul took a phone call from April, and everything got worse.
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  He was sitting helplessly with Hannah and her mother in Hannah’s apartment, an hour after Paul had finally been released by the FBI. “Don’t talk to anyone and don’t leave the city,” Agent Goldberg had said, surely the most unnecessary piece of advice in Fibbie history. Hannah had asked Paul to help her get her mother to Hannah’s apartment, a request that Paul hadn’t understood at all, until he did.

  Both Hannah and Annabel were vivid and courageous women, in their different ways, but Julia Sevley seemed so tentative, so fearful, in everything she said or did that it was incredible she had given birth to these daughters. Of course, Julia was terrified for Annabel. But she seemed equally terrified of Paul, of the cab driver, of the poodle being brought up in the elevator after a walk with its owner, of Hannah’s apartment, of Hannah herself. A limp rag, Paul thought, and knew he was being uncharitable, and didn’t care. Hannah had heated something nearly indigestible for dinner, which none of them ate. Paul had run out of explanations, reassurances, and hope to offer Julia, who got on his nerves. He was exhausted. He wanted to go home.

  “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll just—” His wrister rang. April.

  “Paul, I’m still at the lab,” April said. “The secure computer just delivered a time-delayed message to you. From Emily.”

  “Open it,” he said thickly, while Hannah’s face swiveled to gaze at his.

  “I can’t,” April said, “I don’t have your override password to bypass the retina scan. And it won’t let me forward it to your wrister.”

  Emily had always been good with software. Paul said, “My password is louispasteuryougoguy, all small case. Open the message and read it aloud.” After a second’s hesitation, he put the wrister on loudspeaker.

  Emily’s face, taut-jawed and defiant, appeared on the tiny screen. “Paul. I’m sorry. This is not what was supposed to happen. I went to the press about Annabel for the public good. She’s a menace to everybody—I went for the public good!”

  Hannah said, “They must have paid the bitch for her story. Hugely.”

  “But,” Emily said, and here her voice grew rich with self-justification, “I didn’t know that the reporter would blab to somebody even before he’d finished marshaling his facts, or that the somebody would know an SLA soldier—but however it happened, I didn’t intend any harm to Annabel or you. I just did what I thought was right. And now they’ll punish me for it, so I’m leaving before anyone can do that. We don’t all have rich relatives willing to support us in a life of leisure.”

  Hannah snorted.

  “I won’t be back,” Emily finished defiantly. “Not that you really care one way or the other. Bye.”

  “Oh, she’ll be back,” Hannah said. “In cuffs.”

  Julia started to cry.

  Paul raised his wrister to call Agent Goldberg.

  * * *

  Drops of the acid eating away at the ropes touched her wrist. Annabel’s skin burned and she cried out in pain. But when the ropes fell away, she could only stare.

  Did the termites do that?

  Did I do that?

  Did struggling so hard to get free make her parasites aware of what she herself wanted? Was that possible?

  The door opened. Quickly Annabel pulled the top sheet over the severed ropes, the blood, her naked genitalia. Mother Moran came in with her everlasting basket.

  “Dinner, my dear. Just let me get my helmet on, the boys out there lack the complete faith that the Great Unseen says will protect us against—”

  Annabel was out of bed and on her. Before Mother Moran could reach for any kind of panic button or hidden alarm, Annabel had her on the floor, arms pinned out to the sides. The gable-shaped headdress fell off, exposing sparse gray hair. The old body was light and insubstantial, as if her bones floated, fragile straws, in a sac mostly made of wind. Annabel’s head began to throb. Mother Moran closed her eyes and began to chant.

  For just a moment Annabel feared that maybe the chants were real, and the Great Unseen would come to Mother Moran’s aid, or a guardian angel or demon or whatever would materialize. . ..The moment passed. Annabel caught both of the old woman’s wrists in one hand and yanked the totemic mish-mash of jewelry off her neck. Of course, the panic button could be elsewhere on her clothing.

  Now what?

  “. . .and protect us from all evil, lift us into the hand of safety. . ..”

  Annabel couldn’t kill her. She just couldn’t. There must be another way.

  Mother Moran’s chanting changed to another language, Latin or Gaelic or Sanskrit or something. At the same moment, Annabel thought of her own mother. The image came clear and bright into her mind: Julia as she had been when Annabel was a child, holding Annabel by the hand, smiling down at her. They had been walking to the movies, both of them laughing at something forgotten that a six-year-old would consider funny. Red maple leaves had swirled across their feet, the air had smelled of wood smoke, and Mommy had worn a jacket as red as the leaves.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Annabel panted at Mother Moran—the headache was growing worse—“but I have to do this.”

  With her free hand she fished around in the big basket for duct tape. She taped Mother Moran’s mouth, wrists, and ankles. Then she stripped off the old woman’s sari. Underneath, Mother Moran wore a saggy bra and white, elastic-waisted underpants that somehow hurt Annabel’s heart.

  She lifted Mother Moran onto the bed, covered her with the sheet, and tied one wrist to the bedframe as gently as possible. Clumsily she draped the sari over herself, arranging it to cover as much as possible of her tee, hiding the nakedness of her bottom half. The sari gave off the musty smell of old flesh.

  Okay, termites. You’re on.

  Quietly Annabel stood beside the bed and concentrated. Every few minutes she thought, This is insane. Then she brought her mind back to the picture in front of it, her fingers moving over her face and Mother Moran’s, back again, then again. She closed her eyes so as not to see the fury in the old woman’s, and then opened them again. Maybe the termites needed to see Mother Moran. Who knew what they needed?

  This is insane.

  Fingers moving over one face and then the other, pulling her own skin down, ignoring the sudden flashes of joy or anger or calm or alertness that came and went in her mind. Those weren’t her. But they meant the termites were trying, or at least that’s what she hoped it meant.

  This is insane—

  She felt the change begin.

  * * *

  The host was communicating instructions. The entity didn’t understand them, but that wasn’t its concern. Nor was obedience. The host’s concern was self-preservation, and everything the entity sensed, in its exquisitely fine-tuned response to the host’s body, said that these instructions were necessary for both of their survival. The host understood survival in the larger world better than did the entity. At long last, it was behaving as it should, for both their benefit.

  The host’s body naturally made melatonin. It was not hard to induce the host to make more on the top one-tenth of the host’s skin, and to make it uneven in pigmentation.

  The host’s body also naturally made collagen, which plumped out the contours of that same one-tenth to make them firm and smooth. It was not hard to destroy some of that collagen, making the skin sag, and have some created in other areas, forming lumps.

  The host’s body had hair follicles all over it; hair fibers were hastily pumped out on the host’s lip and chin.

  All this took several hours and consumed much energy. But the host bore it patiently. From this, the entity knew the changes must be critical.

  It worked as fast as it could.

  * * *

  Hannah said, “Here it comes.”

  Paul, who had not gone home after all, looked at the holo software on Hannah’s laptop. He had just ended a long conference call to the CDC Director, legal counsel, and PR chief. FBI reinforcements were on their way, to both here and MIT.

  “CDC HIDING PLAGUE IN
BOSTON!” screamed a very agitated news avatar. “COVER-UP DECADES OLD—PUTTING YOUR CHILDREN AT RISK!”

  Paul knew he should watch (“Know your enemy”), but all at once he could not. He’d reached the end of his ability to cope. Julia had gone into Hannah’s bedroom and the cops had cordoned off Annabel’s room and told them not to disturb anything in there. So Paul went into the bathroom, the only room left, and closed the door. He sat on the toilet, head bowed, and wondered how bad it was going to get.

  He suspected very, very bad.

  * * *

  Annabel peered at herself in the back of the shiny metal spoon with which Mother Moran had been going to feed her more curry, and she gasped. The spoon wasn’t a very good mirror, giving her a reflection that was too long and too narrow. But it was clear enough for her to see her splotchy brown skin, her sags and lumps and wrinkles, her chin hairs.

  But I’m only nineteen!

  Dumb, dumb. If the termites could do this, then they could just put it all back later. She hoped.

  Hastily, light-headed and ferociously hungry but needing to move after the long hours of motionlessness, Annabel put on Mother Moran’s gable-shaped headdress. Her hair had not turned gray, not even at the roots; she pulled out a few strands and examined them, just to be sure. Evidently the termites couldn’t do that. Annabel adjusted the headdress and its veil to hide every bit of her hair. Around her neck she put the chain with its three conflicting spiritual symbols. Slowly she walked around the room, practicing both a hunched back and a shuffling gait that kept the sari draped over her pink, very young-looking toes.

  When she felt ready, she turned to the door, and realized she’d forgotten that it was coded to a keypad password she didn’t know.

  * * *

  Hannah sat numbly watching the Internet, which had been set to cycle through twenty different news sites of all types, thirty seconds on each. She didn’t even try to argue in her mind with the misstatements and hysteria and demagoguery. Even the responsible news sites were in fear mode, branding the CDC as criminally negligent and Annabel as a latter-day Typhoid Mary. On the specialized news sites she was called a demon, the Anti-Christ, a child-killing witch, a mutant, an unnatural monster, the tool of a plot to destroy the United States, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a bioweapon, and an agent of scientific fascism.