Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Beside it sat a rack of vials with blood samples, all neatly labeled.

  Max immediately went to the computer and turned it on. “No Internet,” he said, disappointed. “Just a LAN, and . . . wow, this is heavily shielded.”

  “You realize,” Marianne said, “that this is a minor part of the science going on aboard the Embassy. All we do is process mitochondrial DNA to identify L7 haplogroup members. We’re a backwater on the larger map.”

  “Hey, we’re here,” Max said. He grinned at her. “Too bad, though, about no World of Warcraft. This thing has no games at all. What do I do in my spare time?”

  “Work,” Marianne said, just as the door opened and two people entered. Marianne recognized one of them, although she had never met him before. Unsmiling, dark-suited, he was Security. The woman was harder to place. Middle-aged, wearing jeans and a sweater, her hair held back by a too-girlish headband. But her smile was warm, and it reached her eyes. She held out her hand.

  “Dr. Jenner? I’m Lisa Gutierrez, the genetics counselor. I’ll be your liaison with the volunteers. We probably won’t be seeing each other again, but I wanted to say hello. And you’re Dr. Blanford?”

  “Yes,” Evan said.

  Marianne frowned. “Why do we need a genetic counselor? I was told our job is to simply process blood samples to identify members of the L7 haplogroup.”

  “It is,” Lisa said, “and then I take it from there.”

  “Take what from there?”

  Lisa studied her. “You know, of course, that the Denebs would like to identify those surviving human members of their own haplogroup. They consider them family. The concept of family is pivotal to them.”

  Marianne said, “You’re not a genetic counselor. You’re a xenopsychologist.”

  “That, too.”

  “And what happens after the long-lost family members are identified?”

  “I tell them that they are long-lost family members.” Her smile never wavered.

  “And then?”

  “And then they get to meet Ambassador Smith.”

  “And then?”

  “No more ‘then.’ The Ambassador just wants to meet his six-thousand-times-removed cousins. Exchange family gossip, invent some in-jokes, confer about impossible Uncle Harry.”

  So she had a sense of humor. Maybe it was a qualification for billing oneself a ‘xenopsychologist,’ a profession that, until a few months ago, had not existed.

  “Nice to meet you both,” Lisa said, widened her smile another fraction of an inch, and left.

  Evan murmured, “My, people come and go so quickly here.”

  But Marianne was suddenly not in the mood, not even for quoted humor from such an appropriate source as The Wizard of Oz. She sent a level gaze at Evan, Max, Gina.

  “Okay, team. Let’s get to work.”

  II: S MINUS 9.5 MONTHS

  MARIANNE

  There were four other scientific teams aboard the Embassy, none of which were interested in Marianne’s backwater. The other teams consisted of scientists from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford, the Beijing Genomics Institute, Kyushu University, and the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, perhaps the top immunology center in the world. Some of the most famous names in the scientific and medical worlds were here, including a dozen Nobel winners. Marianne had no knowledge of, but could easily imagine, the political and scientific competition to get aboard the Embassy. The Americans had an edge because the ship sat in New York Harbor and that, too, must have engendered political threats and counterthreats, bargaining and compromise.

  The most elite group, and by far the largest, worked on the spores: germinating, sequencing, investigating this virus that could create a worldwide human die-off. They worked in negative-pressure, biosafety-level-four chambers. Previously the United States had had only two BSL4 facilities, at the CDC in Atlanta and at USAMRIID in Maryland. Now there was a third, dazzling in its newness and in the completeness of its equipment. The Spore Team had the impossible task of creating some sort of vaccine or other method of neutralizing, worldwide, a pathogen not native to Earth, within ten months.

  The Biology Team investigated alien tissues and genes. The Denebs gave freely of whatever was asked: blood, epithelial cells, sperm, biopsy samples. “Might even give us a kidney, if we asked nicely enough,” Evan said. “We know they have two.”

  Marianne said, “You ask, then.”

  “Not me. Too frightful to think what they might ask in exchange.”

  “So far, they’ve asked nothing.”

  Almost immediately the Biology Team verified the Denebs as human. Then began the long process of finding and charting the genetic and evolutionary differences between the aliens and Terrans. The first, announced after just a few weeks, was that all of the seventeen aliens in the Embassy carried the same percentage as Terrans of Neanderthal genes: from one to four percent.

  “They’re us,” Evan said.

  “Did you doubt it?” Marianne asked.

  “No. But more interesting, I think, are the preliminary findings that the Denebs show so much less genetic diversity than we do. That wanker Wilcox must be weeping in his ale.”

  Patrick Wells Wilcox was the current champion of the Toba Catastrophe Theory, which went in and out of scientific fashion. Seventy thousand years ago the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia had erupted. This had triggered such major environmental change, according to theory proponents, that a “bottleneck event” had occurred, reducing the human population to perhaps 10,000 individuals. The result had been a great reduction in human genetic diversity. Backing for the idea came from geology as well as coalescence evidence of some genes, including mitochondrial, Y-chromosome, and nuclear. Unfortunately, there was also evidence that the bottleneck event had never occurred. If the Denebs, removed from Earth well before the supervolcano, showed less diversity than Terrans, then Terran diversity couldn’t have been reduced all that much.

  Marianne said, “Wilcox shouldn’t weep too soon.”

  “Actually, he never weeps at all. Gray sort of wanker. Holes up in his lab at Cambridge and glowers at the world through medieval arrow slits.”

  “Dumps boiling oil on dissenting paleontologists,” Marianne suggested.

  “Actually, Wilcox may not even be human. Possibly an advance scout for the Denebs. Nobody at Cambridge has noticed it so far.”

  “Or so we think.” Marianne smiled. She and Evan never censored their bantering, which helped lower the hushed, pervasive anxiety they shared with everyone else on the Embassy. It was an anxious ship.

  The third scientific team aboard was much smaller. Physicists, they worked with “Scientist Jones” on the astronomy of the coming collision with the spore cloud.

  The fourth team she never saw at all. Nonetheless, she suspected they were there, monitoring the others, shadowy underground non-scientists unknown even to the huge contingent of visible security.

  Marianne looked at the routine work on her lab bench: polymerase chain reaction to amplify DNA samples, sequencing, analyzing data, writing reports on the genetic inheritance of each human volunteer who showed up at the Deneb “collection site” in Manhattan. A lot of people showed up. So far, only two of them belonged to Ambassador Smith’s haplogroup. “Evan, we’re not really needed, you and I. Gina and Max can handle anything our expensive brains are being asked to do.”

  Evan said, “Right, then. So let’s have a go at exploring. Until we’re stopped, anyway.”

  She stared at him. “Okay. Yes. Let’s explore.”

  NOAH

  Noah emerged from the men’s room at the restaurant. During the mid-afternoon lull they had no customers except for a pair of men slumped over one table in the back. “Look at this!” the waitress said to him. She and the cook were both huddled over her phone, strange enough since they hated each other. But Cindy’s eyes were wide from
something other than her usual drugs, and Noah took a look at the screen of the sophisticated phone, mysteriously acquired and gifted by Cindy’s current boyfriend before he’d been dragged off to Riker’s for assault with intent.

  VOLUNTEERS WANTED TO DONATE BLOOD

  PAYMENT: $100

  HUMAN NURSES TO COLLECT SMALL BLOOD SAMPLES

  DENEB EMBASSY PIER, NEW YORK HARBOR

  “Demonios del Diablo,” Miguel muttered. “Vampiros!” He crossed himself.

  Noah said dryly, “I don’t think they’re going to drink the blood, Miguel.” The dryness was false. His heart had begun to thud. People like his mother got to see the Embassy up close, not people like Noah. Did the ad mean that the Denebs were going to take human blood samples on the large dock he had just seen form out of nothing?

  Cindy had lost interest. “No fucking customers except those two sorry asses in the corner, and they never tip. I shoulda stood in bed.”

  “Miguel,” Noah said, “can I have the afternoon off?”

  Noah stood patiently in line at the blood-collection site. If any of the would-be volunteers had hoped to see aliens, they had been disappointed. Noah was not disappointed; after all, the ad on Cindy’s phone had said HUMAN NURSES TO COLLECT SMALL BLOOD SAMPLES.

  He was, however, disappointed that the collection site was not on the large dock jutting out from the Embassy under its glittering energy shield. Instead, he waited to enter what had once been a warehouse at the land end of a pier on the Manhattan waterfront. The line, huddled against the November drizzle, snaked in loops and ox-bows for several blocks, and he was fascinated by the sheer diversity of people. A woman in a fur-lined Burberry raincoat and high, polished boots. A bum in jeans with an indecent tear on the ass. Several giggling teenage girls under flowered umbrellas. An old man in a winter parka. A nerdy-looking boy with an iPad protected by flexible plastic. Two tired-looking middle-aged women. One of those said to the other, “I could pay all that back rent if I get this alien money, and—”

  Noah tapped her arm. “Excuse me, ma’am—what ‘alien money’ ?” The $100 fee for blood donation didn’t seem enough to pay all that back rent.

  She turned. “If they find out you’re part of their blood group, you get a share of their fortune. You know, like the Indians with their casino money. If you can prove you’re descended from their tribe.”

  “No, that’s not it,” the old man in the parka said impatiently. “You get a free energy shield like theirs to protect you when the spore cloud hits. They take care of family.”

  The bum muttered, “Ain’t no spore cloud.”

  The boy said with earnest contempt, “You’re all wrong. This is just—the Denebs are the most significant thing to happen to Earth, ever! Don’t you get it? We’re not alone in the universe!”

  The bum laughed.

  Eventually Noah reached Building A. Made of concrete and steel, the building’s walls were discolored, its high-set windows grimy. Only the security machines looked new, and they made high-tech examinations of Noah’s person inside and out. His wallet, cell, jacket, and even shoes were left in a locker before he shuffled, wearing paper slippers, along the enclosed corridor to Building B, farther out on the pier. Someone was very worried about terrorism.

  “Please fill out this form,” said a pretty, grim-faced young woman. Not a nurse: security. She looked like a faded version of his sister, bleached of Elizabeth’s angry command. Noah filled out the form, gave his small vial of blood, and filed back to Building B. He felt flooded with anticlimactic let-down. When he had reclaimed his belongings, a guard handed him a hundred dollars and a small round object the size and feel of a quarter.

  “Keep this with you,” a guard said. “It’s a one-use, one-way communication device. In the unlikely event that it rings, press the center. That means that we’d like to see you again.”

  “If you do, does that mean I’m in the alien’s haplogroup?”

  He didn’t seem to know the word. “If it rings, press the center.”

  “How many people have had their devices ring?”

  The guard’s face changed, and Noah glimpsed the person behind the job. He shrugged. “I never heard of even one.”

  “Is it—?”

  “Move along, please.” The job mask was back.

  Noah put on his shoes, balancing first on one foot and then on the other to avoid touching the grimy floor. It was like being in an airport. He started for the door.

  “Noah!” Elizabeth sailed toward him across a sea of stained concrete. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Hi, Lizzie. Is this part of the New York State border?”

  “I’m on special assignment.”

  God, she must hate that. Her scowl threatened to create permanent furrows in her tanned skin. But Elizabeth always obeyed the chain of command.

  “Noah, how can you—?”

  A bomb went off.

  A white light blinded Noah. His hearing went dead, killed by the sheer onslaught of sound. His legs wobbled as his stomach lurched. Then Elizabeth knocked him to the ground and hurled herself on top of him. A few seconds later she was up and running and Noah could hear her again: “Fucking flashbang!”

  He stumbled to his feet, his eyes still painful from the light. People screamed and a few writhed on the floor near a pile of clothes that had ignited. Black smoke billowed from the clothing, setting the closest people to coughing, but no one seemed dead. Guards leaped at a young man shouting something lost in the din.

  Noah picked up his shoes and slipped outside, where sirens screamed, honing in from nearby streets. The salt-tanged breeze touched him like a benediction.

  A flashbang. You could buy a twelve-pack of them on the Internet for fifty bucks, although those weren’t supposed to ignite fires. Whatever that protestor had hoped to accomplish, it was ineffective. Just like this whole dumb blood-donation expedition.

  But he had a hundred dollars he hadn’t had this morning, which would buy a few good hits of sugarcane. And in his pocket, his fingers closed involuntarily on the circular alien coin.

  MARIANNE

  Marianne was surprised at how few restricted areas of the Embassy there were.

  The BSL4 areas, of course. The aliens’ personal quarters, not very far from the BSL4 labs. But her and Evan’s badges let them roam pretty much everywhere else. Humans rushed passed them on their own errands, some nodding in greeting but others too preoccupied to even notice they were there.

  “Of course there are doors we don’t even see,” Evan said. “Weird alien cameras we don’t see. Denebs we don’t see. They know where we are, where everyone is, every minute. Dead easy.”

  The interior of the Embassy was a strange mixture of materials and styles. Many corridors were exactly what you’d expect in a scientific research facility: unadorned, clean, lined with doors. The walls seemed to be made of something that was a cross between metal and plastic, and did not dent. Walls in the personal quarters and lounges, on the other hand, were often made of something that reminded her of Japanese rice paper, but soundproof. She had the feeling that she could have put her fist through them, but when she actually tried this, the wall only gave slightly, like a very tough piece of plastic. Some of these walls could be slid open, to change the size or shapes of rooms. Still other walls were actually giant screens that played constantly shifting patterns of subtle color. Finally, there were odd small lounges that seemed to have been furnished from upscale mail-order catalogues by someone who thought anything Terran must go with anything else: earth-tone sisal carpeting with a Victorian camelback sofa, Picasso prints with low Moroccan tables inlaid with silver and copper, a Navaho blanket hung on the wall above Japanese zabutons.

  Marianne was tired. They’d come to one such sitting area outside the main dining hall, and she sank into an English club chair beside a small table of swooping purple glass. “Evan—do you really believe we are all going to die a year from now?”

  “No.” He sat in an adjoi
ning chair, appreciatively patting its wide and upholstered arms. “But only because my mind refuses to entertain the thought of my own death in any meaningful way. Intellectually, though, yes. Or rather, nearly all of us will die.”

  “A vaccine to save the rest?”

  “No, there is simply not enough time to get all the necessary bits and pieces sorted out. But the Denebs will save some Terrans.”

  “How?”

  “Take a selected few back with them to that big ship in the sky.”

  Immediately she felt stupid that she hadn’t thought of this before. Stupidity gave way to the queasy, jumpy feeling of desperate hope. “Take us Embassy personnel? To continue joint work on the spores?” Her children, somehow she would have to find a way to include Elizabeth, Noah, Ryan and Connie and the baby! But everyone here had family—

  “No,” Evan said. “Too many of us. My guess is just the Terran members of their haplogroup. Why else bother to identify them? And everything I’ve heard reinforces their emphasis on blood relationships.”

  “Heard from whom? We’re in the lab sixteen hours a day—”

  “I don’t need much sleep. Not like you, Marianne. I talk to the Biology Group, who talk more than anybody else to the aliens. Also I chat with Lisa Gutierrez, the genetic counselor.”

  “And the Denebs told somebody they’re taking their haplogroup members with them before the spore cloud hits?”

  “No, of course not. When do the Denebs tell Terrans anything directly? It’s all smiling evasion, heartfelt reassurances. They’re like Philippine houseboys.”