Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Annabel had been safer in that mountain crevasse, all those years ago.

  The federal government promised to throw a quarantine around the entire city of Boston. Meanwhile, sirens sounded in the street outside. Hannah went to the window. Cop cars screeched to a halt; Agent Goldberg and five other people got out of a dark unmarked car. The press would be only minutes behind.

  Hannah’s stomach twisted, but she was not going to give way to terror or unhelpful anger. She was going to stay strong, for Annabel. She was not going to be Julia, cowering in the bedroom.

  “Paul?” Hannah said in the direction of the bathroom. “Paul? Are you coming out of there?”

  * * *

  Annabel scowled at the keypad. She had come this far; she wasn’t going to be stopped now. Although, really, how far had she come? She was still trapped in a boat cabin with a crazy old woman who, incredibly, was now snoring loudly on the blood-smeared bed. Well, old people needed to sleep.

  “Termites,” she said softly, “now what?” They had made her into an old woman; they could damn well make her into a free one.

  Annabel visualized the keypad. Mother Moran touching it. Annabel touching it. Over and over.

  Nothing.

  Well, of course not. They couldn’t read her mind. Before, she’d had to pantomime what she’d wanted them to do. They understood her through motion, emotion, nerves doing something physical. She reached out to touch the keypad, then yanked on the doorknob. Over and over.

  But how could the termites know the keycode, if Annabel hadn’t ever seen Mother Moran enter it? If Annabel had to wake up the old woman, threaten to hurt her in order to get the code, even actually hurt her—no, that wasn’t possible. Not an old woman, batshit crazy. And if Annabel made herself get into a rage so her termites took over. . . But that wouldn’t work either. She’d tried it. A phrase from Hannah’s legalese floated into Annabel’s mind: a clear and present danger. There had to be a clear and present danger in order for the termites to do that neural-hijacking thing. They had to feel threatened.

  So how was she going to get out of this room, before someone came to see why Mother Moran wasn’t creeping around the ship setting spells or leading a Black Mass or whatever she did?

  Annabel stared hopelessly at the keyboard. To have come this far. . .. Her hand moved toward the keypad, almost of its own volition. She jerked it back because the feeling was so creepy. But then she gave in, and her hand touched every single key, one after the other.

  The termites still didn’t understand! She didn’t need every key, she just needed the ones comprising the code. Stupid termites!

  Annabel’s hand fell to her side. Some of the keys began to glow. How. . ..

  Then she understood.

  Those were the keys that Mother Moran had touched. The old woman’s fingers had left sweat or oil or skin molecules or something on just those keys, and now Annabel’s fingers had deposited something on top of that and the two were interacting. But in what order had Mother Moran touched them? The S and L keys shone Day-Glo orange, A, E, U, and R lighter orange. So maybe use S and L more than once. . .

  SLA RULES.

  Cheesy! Annabel touched the letters in order, and the door clicked softly. She picked up Mother Moran’s basket and, head down and back hunched, left the cabin. A short metal corridor, and in the shine of a fanlight over the cabin door stood a guard, a big man in full SLA uniform. In her crouching posture, she could see his boots, chest, hands with thick fingers like bunches of bananas. And his gun.

  “I ask your blessing, Mother,” he said.

  * * *

  Paul had left, under police escort, to go home. Hannah braced herself and went into her bedroom. With any luck, Julia would be asleep. Hannah could get her night things and an extra blanket and sleep on the sofa. But if Julia was awake and fell into stupid hysterics, Hannah wasn’t going to put up with it. She didn’t have Annabel’s patience with their mother’s cowardice. Let her be asleep—

  Julia wasn’t. Nor was she crying. She was kneeling before Hannah’s night stand, which had been cleared of its usual clutter of notes, tissues, books, and used coffee mugs. The night stand now held the bowl of flowers that Annabel placed regularly on Hannah’s dresser and which Hannah barely noticed before they were dead. Beside the flowers sat a framed picture of Annabel as a young child, which Julia must have brought with her, and a small religious statue.

  Hannah exploded. “Oh, fuck! You, too? Isn’t it bad enough that all this irrational hocus-pocus is why Annabel’s gone missing in the first place? Have you been wasting all this time praying? What the fuck is wrong with you!”

  Julia didn’t crumple. She stood and gazed steadily at Hannah. Her voice was surprisingly strong. “You think you have all the answers, Hannah, but you don’t. You’re brilliant and hard-working and accomplished, but you don’t know everything. Here’s something you don’t know: In scientific studies run by universities, remote prayer has had a beneficial effect on dying patients. They live longer and show fewer symptoms. It’s true. You can check it on the Internet. As I’m sure you will.”

  “The data—”

  “Is solid and peer-juried. One of the studies, published just last year, was done at Harvard. Go ahead, Hannah, be the lawyer that you are. That I’m proud of you for being. Look it up now.”

  “I will!” Hannah said, but her voice quavered and then, to her horror, her knees gave way under her. She made it to the bed, collapsed on the duvet, and began to sob.

  Julia sat beside her and stroked her hair.

  “Let it out, Hannah. It’s okay to cry for Annabel.”

  “No!” Hannah said, and cried louder. Julia went on stroking her hair.

  When Hannah was done, she jerked upright on the bed. “This isn’t me! I don’t cry!”

  “I know,” Julia said gently. But I found a quote I wanted to give you. I’ve wanted to give it to you for a long time. It’s from Voltaire: ‘Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.’ Certainty in either direction, Hannah.”

  Hannah seemed to not even have heard her mother. Or can’t, Julia thought. Hannah said, “I haven’t cried since I was thirteen years old!”

  “I know.”

  “Sometimes,” Hannah said, the words wrenched from somewhere deep within herself, “sometimes I just don’t know who I really am.”

  * * *

  “Blessings,” Annabel muttered at the guard, raising her hand in a small, vague gesture. What would Mother Moran do now? Where would she go? Annabel had no idea, but the old woman’s words came to her: “They dasn’t disobey me.”

  The guard said, “The abomination is all right?”

  “Aye.”

  “Colonel Whittaker will be here in a few more hours and we can leave.”

  “Aye,” Annabel said, carefully noting the name. She shuffled away, trying to keep the sari from exposing her toes. This proved even more difficult when the short passage ended in a ladder. Annabel climbed it, her basket in her hand, hoping the guard wasn’t watching her, not daring to turn around to check. The gable headdress wobbled precariously on her head, which was bigger than Mother Moran’s.

  The ladder ended in a deck circled by a waist-high railing. It was night, thick with clouds and not very warm. Annabel, who had no experience with boats, saw that this one wasn’t as large as she’d imagined, maybe forty feet long. At the pointed end, thirty feet from her, some people lounged against the railing, drinking and talking in low voices. One of them pointed at her and she froze, but nothing happened.

  Annabel shuffled in the opposite direction.

  The boat lay at anchor somewhere in the outer harbor, with no other boats nearby. Lights shone on shore and on an island farther off—Spectacle Island? She didn’t know. Nor could she, in the blackness, judge how far away was the shore.

  A woman in SLA uniform came toward her. “Mother Moran,” she said, without enthusiasm. “All okay below?”

  “Aye.”

  Ann
abel had raised her head to study the shore. How much of her face had the woman seen? Annabel had seen all of hers; it seemed imprinted on her brain. Long chin and nose, glasses, red hair, the kind of expression that said Don’t mess with me. Annabel hadn’t been hunching enough; she was taller than Mother Moran, and yes, her toes were visible. She shifted slightly so the sari would swing to hide them and hoped the woman hadn’t seen.

  “You seem different tonight.”

  Annabel said nothing.

  “Glad to go back ashore, yes? Tired of spouting mumbo-jumbo to keep the yahoos in line?”

  They dasn’t disobey me. But that didn’t apply to this woman. Annabel said nothing, trying for proud dignity. It was, however, difficult to do proud dignity when worried about your toes.

  The woman laughed and moved on. Annabel’s disguise—her termites’ disguise—had worked after all. Or maybe what Hannah often said was really true: young people never looked closely at old ones. The old became invisible.

  Although maybe not if you were a sorceress.

  Annabel shuffled on. The non-pointy part of the boat was deserted, a narrow squarish area behind a big cabin. Deck chairs stood on top of the cabin but no one sat in them. Annabel set down her basket and tore off the sari and headdress. There was nowhere to hide them, so she didn’t. In only her bra she climbed over the railing, shivered, and let herself down into the water as soundlessly as she could. It was so cold. Taking a deep breath, she dived deep and swam underwater away from the boat and its lights, toward shore.

  * * *

  More oxygen. Warmth. Bursts of adrenalin. The entity scrambled to provide what the host needed to survive, even as panic raced along its complex network that the host’s resources, and theirs, would not be enough for whatever the host was trying to do.

  What was it trying to do? And why?

  * * *

  The distance to shore was farther than Annabel thought. She was a good swimmer, but maybe not this good. The lights were not getting closer. The water of the harbor was so cold, she was so tired. . .

  Something brushed by her in the water. A shark? Annabel screamed and salty, oily water sloshed into her mouth. A shark? Were there sharks in the harbor? What else couldn’t she see out here?

  Treading the black water, she gasped for breath. Her legs felt like cold, dead weights. She was losing the ability to distinguish between water and sky. She was not going to make it.

  No, no, no, I don’t want to die—

  * * *

  More oxygen! More adrenalin! More energy to muscles—

  The entity was doing all it could, calling on all its resources and all of the host’s. Danger danger danger—

  * * *

  Help me.

  A plea to whom? To what? She didn’t know. But there came to Annabel’s exhausted mind a sudden clarity, almost a peace. Was this what happened when you drowned?

  No. This was something else. There were no stars above, but this was the same transcendental oneness she’d experienced then, lifting her out of herself, weaving her into something greater. The moment, suspended out of time, both passed too quickly and lasted an eternity.

  It was gone, and Annabel was once again swimming. Had that been—what? Her termites? No. Her imagination? No. What—

  Then she gave all her energy to swimming. More than once she swallowed more salty water. More than once her legs refused to move any more. More than once, they did.

  Lights, closer and closer—

  The outlines of houses, ghostly in the glow of their own outdoor lights. With the last of her strength Annabel climbed onto a dock and collapsed, too exhausted and cold to move any farther. She could barely turn her head to vomit up sea water. Voices sounded at the far end of the dock, and glasses clinked. A dock party.

  Then feet pounded toward her, a flashlight, shouts. “There’s a naked girl here!”

  “Is she dead—turn her over!”

  “It’s not a girl—look at that old face!”

  “Look at her body!”

  Silence. Oh, God, let them not be age-of-imagination lunatics who would think she was a deformed mermaid or a succubus or a demon. Let them not think she should be drowned or beaten or—

  “Call Emergency,” someone said. “Now. Daniel, run to the house and get some blankets. Kate, bring some of that hot coffee. Miss. . .can you talk? Are you alive?”

  Yes, Annabel thought. We are.

  * * *

  The helicopter’s rotors made an astonishing amount of noise. Over the din Annabel screamed, yet again, “I want to see Keith!”

  The FBI agent, Goldman or Goldstein or something, stared at her. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Annabel, who had been watching the lights of Boston sparkle below as the copter rose higher in the air, felt his stare and turned to face him. “What? Oh, my face. Yes, I know. I haven’t had time yet to put it back.”

  Agent Goldberg sat speechless.

  The party guests on the dock had not been listening to news. Bewildered, kind, and slightly drunk, they had wrapped Annabel in blankets, gotten her inside their lovely house, and phoned Hannah. Hannah had called the FBI. In less time than Annabel had imagined—or maybe more time, she was exhausted, dehydrated, on the verge of hypothermia, and time seemed strangely elastic—this Agent Goldsomething had arrived in a helicopter, landing on the kind people’s front yard. Before that, however, there had been EMTs, and they had heard the news. One of them refused to touch her at all. The other two had pumped her full of various things, and then the FBI had arrived, four armed agents, and Annabel had been whisked away. Now she felt enough like herself to demand information about Keith. He was alive and in the hospital.

  Annabel shouted, “I want to see Keith!”

  “You will.” Agent Golden had found his voice. “But first I need to get you safe.”

  “You need to find that boat before it and Colonel Whittaker disappear across the ocean!”

  “We’re doing that.” He sounded more sure of himself, like this, at least, was something he understood.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a safe place,” he said, and finally wrenched his gaze from her face.

  * * *

  The safe house was somewhere outside Boston but Hannah, in the back of a windowless van with her mother, Paul, and two FBI agents, had no idea where. Hannah felt as if she’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. The FBI had gotten them past the reporters, out of Hannah’s apartment building through a basement storeroom, which led to a rat-infested tunnel, which gave out onto an alley lined with dumpsters. Hannah and Julia had brought a few necessities for themselves and Annabel but had been stripped of their wristers or anything else that could track or be tracked. Hannah was just as glad to be spared any more news avatars.

  “I wish they’d drive faster,” Hannah said, but no one was listening. Paul talked softly and too technically to Julia, trying to explain two years of biological research on Annabel. Hannah heard “symbiote” and “evolution” and “monoamine transporters.”

  To the other agent, Anna Velosky, Hannah said, “What will happen to the other infected children? Emily didn’t out them to anybody.”

  “I have no information about that, ma’am,” Agent Velosky said, which may or may not have been true.

  When they finally arrived, Hannah’s mother cried out. As well she might—Annabel looked. . .Annabel was. . ..

  “I can put my face back,” Annabel said. She hugged Hannah and Julia and then demanded, “I want to see Keith. Now.”

  Hannah found her voice. “Agent Goldberg told me that you can’t—”

  “Now, or I’ll get mad. You really wouldn’t like me when I get mad.” And then, “Joke, Hannah. It was a joke.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said, and found she had to sit down.

  * * *

  In the end, they brought Keith to Annabel, at the safe house on a quiet, heavily treed road in a rural area outside Boston. Paul was just as glad. He didn’t want to leave, or have Annabel leave, unt
il it was absolutely necessary. Nothing had ever fascinated him as much as Annabel’s return of her face to its previous teenage appearance. Paul had had three people record the transformation, because he would eventually need both multiple proofs and multiple witnesses. Now he wanted Annabel someplace where he could observe her, take notes and samples, make his nearly hourly report to the CDC Director. And someplace without constant news.

  As Annabel’s primary medical advisor, although now assisted by a host of specialists who clearly resented the priority of a researcher over practicing physicians, he had forbidden Annabel all newscasts for the moment. He wanted baseline readings, not high-stress ones. They had been in the safe house for several days now, and Annabel had not insisted on news. She was too absorbed in Keith.

  The FBI had transported him here from Mass General. He had a cast on one leg and various bandages, but otherwise seemed recovered, given the blows he’d taken. The resiliency of youth. Youthfulness was also evident in Keith and Annabel’s complete involvement with each other, their unvoiced but totally evident feeling that no one else had ever had such a perfect, seamless, eternal love. A kind of madness, it played havoc with Annabel’s appetite and sleep cycles, skewing the baseline readings. The whole thing made Paul glad he had never married.

  It was Hannah who told him Goldberg’s news that everyone on the boat was under arrest. The FBI had waited until Annabel’s “Colonel Whittaker” was aboard. The man was evidently important, wanted for any number of crimes under any number of aliases. The arrests, fortunately, had not yet hit the news.

  Annabel, Keith, and Hannah came into the kitchen, now Paul and April’s temporary lab. All food was brought in from somewhere else. Paul was sick of pizza. He said, “All packed?”

  “What we have,” Hannah said. “Half the things that agent bought for us don’t fit.”