Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Seth says, “What the—”

  The thermal vent blows. A gush of water and rock and ice and the eel is gone. Simultaneously, the bridge screen that is permanently trained on a close telescopic view of the moon shows a plume rising from the surface, a white streak across the dark sky.

  I grope for my chair and sink into it. No one speaks. Then Seth says, “He’s dead. He rode the plume up and . . . they understand that we must be on the other side of the ice. How—”

  Soledad says, “I don’t know. Except. . . . except that they are much more sophisticated than we thought, much more intelligent.”

  I say, “They’ll do it again.”

  Peter says, almost angrily, “How do you know?”

  Because Polynesians set out again and again onto the uncharted ocean as population pressure made them need more islands.

  I cannot, will not, say that to Peter, or to any of them. “Because that’s their only chance. We are their only chance.”

  Seth says, “If they’re that intelligent, then they know that their . . . their messenger was already dead the second the thermal vent geysered.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Soledad says, “If Rachel is right, the least we can do is capture a specimen. I’m going to station a retrieval probe in geosynchronous orbit over the vent spot.”

  A specimen. But I say nothing. Quarreling over language isn’t worth risking the chance to touch an alien being. Or to save all of them.

  * * *

  An eel is so small. The retrieval probe lasts through five more plumes before it runs out of fuel and crashes to the surface. So does the second probe. We do not get a “specimen.” An alien. An intelligent being.

  And we have to leave Canoe.

  “We have all the data we’re going to get,” Soledad says. “And we can’t do any more here.”

  I’ve waited this long, because bringing home an alien, even dead, would have helped so much. But now I have to speak.

  “We can’t do more here,” I say. “But we can get ready to do more on Terra.”

  Seth says, “What?”

  “We can throw every bit of weight and persuasion and threats, if necessary, around the idea that the next mission has to be back here, not to Wolf 1061 as planned now. A rescue mission, with equipment to bring back a lot of the eels in tanks with their own water and pressure and temperature. A rescue of our interstellar brothers. After all, they have a form of DNA!”

  Seth says, “Bring back? As some sort of zoo animals? I didn’t think you, of all people, would want that!”

  You, of all people. It goes deep, that setting apart of “the other.” But I can’t afford that fight right now. I say, “Not zoo animals. Fellow beings. Guests, at first. Then immigrants. We can do this—Soledad, you said the eels have at least ten years, maybe as much as fifty. That’s enough time for Terrans to get back here.”

  Peter says, “What do you mean ‘threats’?”

  “Threats to campaign against any other mission than rescue. In the media, to the government, to other countries if we have to. Go over the heads of the mission planners.”

  “You’re talking about our careers,” Peter says. “Risking them!”

  “Yes. But to save an entire intelligent species!”

  Soledad says, “Rachel—you’re assuming that persuasion and/or threats will be necessary. That the government won’t see by themselves that a rescue mission to Canoe should supersede the Wolf 1061.”

  Yes. I am assuming that. But her steady look makes me ask myself: Is my distrust of the U.S. government coming from knowledge or from my own prejudices? The question is like a plume of cold water.

  I say lamely, “If they won’t agree right away, I mean.”

  Peter repeats, “We would be risking our careers.”

  Seth—thank Nafanua for Seth!—turns on him with all the idealism of the romantic. “What does that matter next to the eels’ entire extinction? Rachel, I’m in.”

  Soledad says, “This is something for more thinking, and then more discussion.”

  I say, “Okay. But these dead eels, one in each plume and more to come because how will the eels know that we’ve left here? They won’t. These eels—” I fight to keep my voice steady.

  “These messages must be honored. They are a gift from the dying.”

  * * *

  There is nothing interesting in the rest of the Luhman 16 system, or at least nothing as interesting as Canoe. Or as the discussions that we four hold, endlessly. Sometimes the discussions are rational, looking at data assembled for the hypothetical rescue mission. Sometimes they’re acrimonious, when steps are discussed to follow a turn-down by the government. Sometimes they’re hopeful. But always they are inconclusive.

  And always the eels are on my mind, in my dreams, mixed with my memories, until it’s the face of the alien eel I see on each imagined coconut, instead of the two stoma and one drinking hole my father traced for me so long ago.

  Canoe travels steadily outward, away from its sun, even though the visual looks no different to me.

  After the trip to the Y Point, the jump into the Yi drive is less scary than it was the first time since, after all, we survived once. But it’s still a leap into a mostly unknown state with barely proven physics. We’re all a little subdued on that last day in the Luhman 16 system.

  As I prepare for bed in my tiny quarters, a knock sounds. I open the door.

  “Rachel,” Peter says stiffly, “I’ve come to apologize.” He grimaces; this is not easy for him. “I said untrue and unforgivable things to you. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I say, probably even more stiffly. ‘For my words and my . . . for attacking you.”

  He smiles, not warmly. “Daughter of Nafanua.” And then, “I’ll support the rescue-mission idea. Even at risk of my career.”

  A huge surprise. I expected Peter, not Soledad, to be the hold-out. But how much do each of us really know about what goes on inside others? I nod at him.

  “Good night, then.” He turns and I close the door.

  I will never like him, will spend as little time with him as possible. But we are linked, as surely as a section of sub-space near Luhman 16 is inexplicably entangled with a section near Terra. Peter and I are entangled by this rescue crusade, by the memory of what happened between us, by just being human together. Little as I may like it.

  I go to bed and lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling as if it were an ice shelf above me, calculating, with all the mathematical ability that the eels do not possess, our chances of saving them from the lonely dark.

  DEAR SARAH

  IN SOME FAMILIES, it coulda been just a argument. Or maybe a shunning. Not my family—they done murder for less. I got two second cousins doing time in Riverbend. Blood feuds.

  So I told them by Skype.

  Call me a coward. You don’t know Daddy, or Seth. Anyways, it warn’t like I wanted to do it. I just didn’t see no other way out of Brightwater and the life waiting for me there. And Daddy always said to use whatever you got. I was always the best shot anywhere around Brightwater. Shooting good is what I got.

  And like I said, I couldn’t see no other choice.

  “MARYJO! WHERE THE hell you been?”

  “I left a note, Daddy.”

  “All it says is you be gone for a few days. Where are you?”

  I took in a real deep breath. Just say it, Jo. His face filled the screen in the room the recruiter let me have to myself to make this call. She didn’t even seem worried I might steal something. Then Daddy stepped back and I saw our living room behind him, with its sprung tatty couch and magazine pictures on the walls. We piggyback on the Cranstons’ internet, which works most days.

  “Daddy . . . you know there’s nothing for me in Brightwater now.”

  He didn’t answer. Waiting. Mama moved into the screen behind him, then Seth and Sarah.

  I said, “Nothing for any of us. I know we’ve always been there, but now things are different.”r />
  I didn’t have to say what I meant. Daddy’s eyes got that look he gets when anybody mentions the aliens. Eight years now since the oil rigs closed, and the gas drilling, and most important to us, the coal mines. Everybody I know is out of work since the Likkies gave us the Q-energy. Only they didn’t really give it to us, they gave it to the rich guys in Washington and San Francisco and Seattle and Oklahoma City, who just got a whole lot richer selling it back to the country. “A trade partnership” they called it, but somehow people like us got left out of all the trading. We always do.

  I stumbled on. “I want more, Daddy. You always said to use whatever you—”

  “What did you do?” he said, and his voice was quiet thunder.

  “I enlisted.”

  Sarah cried out. She’s only eleven, she don’t understand. Seth, who’s a pretty good stump preacher, pointed his finger at me and started in. “‘Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his hand against me!’”

  Psalm four-something.

  Mama said, “Did you sign anything? Come back and we’ll hide you!”

  Jacob—and where did he come from? He shoulda been out digging bootleg coal for the stove—yelled, “Brightwater is good enough for the rest of us! We been here two hundred years!”

  Mama said, all desperate, “MaryJo, pride goeth before a fall!”

  Sarah: “Come home!”

  Seth: “‘And the many will fall away and betray one another!’”

  Jacob: “You always thought you were better than us!”

  Mama: “Oh dear sweet Jesus, help this prodigal girl to see the light and—”

  Then Daddy cut it all short with that voice of his. “You’re a traitor. To us and to your country.”

  I cried, “I joined the United States Army! You fought in Afghanistan and Grandpa in—”

  “Traitor. And not my daughter. I don’t never want to see your face again.”

  A wail from Mama, and then the screen went black and dead, dead, dead.

  The recruiter came back in. She was in a fancy uniform but her face was kind. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I warn’t about to talk on this with her. Anyways, she knew the situation. The whole fucking country knew the situation. If you have money, you’re glad the Likkies are here, changing up the economy and saving the environment. If you don’t have money, if you’re just working people, your job disappeared to the Likkies’ Q-energy and their factory ’bots and all the rest of it. So you starve. Or you join one of the terrorist groups trying to bring the Likkies down. Or, like me, you do what poor kids have always done, including Daddy and Grandpa—you join the army for a spell.

  Only this time, the army was on the wrong side. The military was fighting our home-raised anti-Likkie terrorists in American cities, even on the moon base and in space. I was going to be defending my family’s enemy.

  I went outside and got on the bus to go to basic training.

  BASIC WARN’T TOO bad. I was at Fort Benning for OSUP, one stop unit training. I’m tough and I don’t need much sleep and after the first few days, nobody messed with me. The drill sergeants mostly picked on somebody else, and my battle buddy was okay, and silent. I had the highest rifle qualification score and so I got picked to fire the live round at AT4 training. The Claymore blew up with more noise and debris than anybody expected, but all I could think of was this: Daddy taught me to shoot, he should be proud of me. Only, of course, he warn’t.

  I didn’t see no aliens at Fort Benning.

  Once somebody suggested sniper school, and I was kinda interested until I found out it involved a lot of math. No way.

  I had three days after OSUT before I had to report to my unit at Fort Drum. I checked into a motel and played video games. The last day, I called home—at least the phone warn’t cut off—and by a miracle, Sarah answered instead of anybody else.

  “Hey, Squirt.”

  “MaryJo?”

  “Yeah. How you doing?”

  “How are you? Where are you? Are you coming home now?”

  “No. I’m going to my unit, in New York. Sarah—”

  “In New York City?”

  I heard the dazzle in her voice, and all at once my throat closed up. It was me who taught Sarah to shoot and about her period and all sorts of shit. I got out, “No, upcountry New York. Listen, you doing okay?” And then what I really wanted to ask: “They forgive me yet?”

  Silence. Then a little whisper, “No. Oh, Jo, quit that army and them Likkies and come home! I miss you!”

  “I can’t, Squirt. But I’ll send—”

  “Gotta go! Seth just come home. Bye!”

  A sharp click on the line.

  I spent my last night drunk.

  The next day I got on my first plane ride and reported to Fort Drum. And right there was my first alien.

  “DOES ANYBODY HAVE any questions?”

  Nobody did. The officer—a lieutenant colonel, the highest rank I ever expected to see talking right at us—stood in front of a hundred sixty FNGs (‘fucking new guys’) talking about Likkies. Only of course he called them by their right name, Leckinites. I don’t know where the name come from or what it means; I mighta slept through that part. But I knew nearly everything else, because for a solid week we been learning about the aliens: their home planet and their biology and their culture and, a lot, how important their help was to fixing Earth’s problems with energy and environment and a bunch of other stuff. We seen pictures and movies and charts, and at night we used our personal hour to argue about them. Near as I could tell, about half the base thought the Likkies were great for humans. The other half was like me, knowing just how bad the aliens made it for folks on the bottom.

  And now we were going to meet one for the first time.

  “Are you sure you have no questions?” Colonel Jamison said, sounding like we shoulda had some. But in the army, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. “No? Then without further delay, let me introduce Mr. Granson. Tensh-hut!”

  We all leapt to attention and the Likkie walked into the room. If its name was ‘Mr. Granson,’ then mine was Dolly Parton. It was tall, like in the movies we seen, and had human-type arms and legs and head (‘This optimum symmetrical design is unsurprisingly replicated in various Terran mammalian species as well’ one of our hand-outs read, whatever the fuck that means.) The Likkie had two eyes and a wide mouth with no lips, no hair or nose. It wore a loose white robe like pictures I seen of Arab sheiks, and there mighta had anything underneath. Its arms ended in seven tentacles each, its skin was sorta light purplish, and it wore a clear helmet like a fishbowl ’cause it can’t breathe our air. No oxygen tank and hose to lug around like old Grandpa Addams had when the lung cancer was getting him. The helmet someways turned our air into theirs. They’re smart bastards, I’ll give them that.

  “Hello,” it said. “I am privileged to meet with you today.”

  Real good English and not too much accent—I heard a lot worse at Fort Benning.

  “My wish is to offer thanks for the help of the US Army, including all of you, in protecting the partnership that we are here to forge between your people and mine. A partnership that will benefit us all.”

  The guy next to me, Lopez, shifted in his seat. His family used to work at a factory that now uses Likkie ’bots instead. But Morales kept his face empty.

  The Likkie went on like that, in a speech somebody human musta wrote for him because it didn’t have no mistakes. At least the speechwriters still got jobs.

  Afterward, there was a lot of bitching in the barracks about the speech, followed by a lot of arguing. I didn’t say nothing. But after lights out, the soldier in the next bunk, Drucker, whispered to me, “You don’t like the Likkies either, do you, Addams?”

  I didn’t answer her. It was after lights-out. But for a long time I couldn’t sleep.

  FORT DRUM SUCKED. Snow and cold and it was almost April, for Chrissake. Back home, flowers would be bloomi
ng. Sarah would be barefoot in shorts.

  She sent me a letter. She was way better’n me at writing.

  Dear Jo,

  I hope you get this letter. My teacher told me what address to put on it and she give me a stamp. She is nice. I got A on my math test last week.

  The big news here is that Jacob is getting married. Nobody knew till now. Her name is Lorna and I don’t like her she is mean but then so is Jacob sometimes so maybe they will be happy together.

  My main reason to write you is to say COME HOME!!! I had a real good idea. If you shoot an alien I bet Daddy would forgive you. Seth too. DO IT!!!

  All my love forever,

  Sarah Addams

  “What’s that?” Drucker said. She was looking over my shoulder and I didn’t even hear her come up behind me.

  “Nothing!” I said, folding the letter. But she already read it. She must read real fast.

  “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, Jo,” she said—that’s the way she talks. “But I have to say that Sarah—is she your younger sister?—sounds like a really smart kid. With the right ideas.”

  Then Drucker looked at me long and serious. I wanted to punch her—for reading my letter, for talking fancy, for not being my family. I didn’t do none of that. Keeping my nose clean. I just said, “Go fuck yourself, Drucker.”

  She only laughed.

  And who said she gets to call me ‘Jo’?

  FORT DRUM WAS not just cold, it was boring. Drill and hike, hike and drill. But we warn’t there long. After a week, fifty of us had a half-hour to prepare to ship out, down to a city called Albany. Drucker was one of us. For days she’d been trying to friend around with me, and sometimes I let her. Usually I keep to myself, but listening to her took my mind off home, at least for a while.

  “Where the fuck is Albany?” I said on the bus.

  A guy in the seat behind me laughed. “Don’t you ever watch the news, Addams?”

  “It’s the capital city of New York State,” Drucker said without sounding snotty, which was the other reason I let her hang around with me. She don’t ever act like she knows more’n me, though she does.