Specimen Days

by Michael Cunningham

  “There was an Emily Dickinson, too,” Simon said.

  “Yes. There was.”

  Simon said, “I have—”

  “What do you have, son?”

  “I’m not your son.”

  “Sorry. Figure of speech. What do you have? Tell me.”

  “I have this sense of a missing part. Some sort of, I don’t know. Engagement. Aliveness. Catareen calls it stroth.”

  “Go on.”

  “I feel like biologicals just wallow in it. I mean it falls over them like rain, and I’m walking through the world in a space suit. I can see everything perfectly, but I don’t quite connect with it.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “Frankly, I was hoping for a little more from you than that.”

  “It’s the poetry, isn’t it? All those conjurings and all that praise roiling around in your circuits. Your poor synapses aren’t quite up to it, I don’t suppose.”

  The seizing up started again. No, it was the new sensation, the floaty, sleeplike electrified thing.

  Simon said, “I am exposed…cut by bitter and poisoned hail.”

  “Are you all right?” Emory asked.

  “No. Something’s happening to me.”

  “What?”

  “Lately I have these strange sensations. Like when my antiaggression override kicks in but different. Softer or something.”

  “I’ve always wondered if actual emotions might start springing up in you. If your connections might start firing, given the proper stimuli.”

  Simon said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

  “You know,” Emory said, “I could probably do a little more work on you. If you and the others want to come with us, I could do some tinkering en route. There’s no time now, but there’ll be plenty of time during the trip. There’ll be lots and lots of time.”

  “You think you could modify me?” Simon asked.

  “I’d be glad to give it a shot.”

  “What do you think you could do?”

  “I’d have to get in there and poke around a little. I could probably override a few commands, program out the aversion to violence. I suspect that inhibits your neurals. I could also enhance a few of the pathways in your cerebral cortex. Though I must say, things seem to be happening on their own. It might be best to just wait and see what develops.”

  Simon stood facing the farm and the silver spaceship. He said, “A child said—”

  Emory joined in. They said in unison, “What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”

  When they returned to the farm, Othea was waiting for them outside the barn door. She said to Emory as they approached, “Please don’t wander off like that. Not today.”

  “Simon and I had a few things to discuss.”

  Othea aimed a brief orange stare at Simon. She said to Emory, “There’s a question about the launch coordinates. I don’t think it’s anything, really, but Ruth is getting out of her depth in there. She needs you to talk her through it.”

  “Glad to,” Emory said. “Simon, please excuse me.”

  Othea continued staring at Simon. She said, “Do you know who Catareen Callatura is?”

  “I know who she is to me,” Simon answered.

  “She was a member of the resistance on Nourthea. The kings, as you may know, rule absolutely. They take everything the people are able to grow or build.”

  “Catareen rebelled?”

  “She was part of a band of women who held back half their harvest. She was a member of the first group, and they organized others. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “She doesn’t tell me anything. I assumed it was a Nadian custom.”

  “They executed the women’s husbands and children.”

  “What?”

  “Publicly. Then they banished the women to Earth.”

  “Catareen was deported.”

  “She really hasn’t told you anything, has she?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to tell you, because I think you might be able to help her if you know. She’s at the end of her life cycle.”

  “What?”

  “I was surprised to see her at all. I’m certain all the others are dead. She must be, oh, well over one hundred years old.”

  “She’s old?”

  “Extremely. We age differently. We don’t decline gradually. We are vital and productive right up until the end, and then we deteriorate quite rapidly. There was a fish called a salmon, I believe. It’s a little like that for us.”

  “And Catareen is dying?”

  “Oh, yes. I knew it the moment I saw her. Her coloring. She’s turned that brilliant green.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “It’s difficult to say, exactly. It could be a week. It could even be a full month.”

  Simon went back to the house. He mounted the stairs and entered the bedroom that had been given to Catareen. She lay on the narrow white bed. She appeared to be sleeping.

  “Hey,” he said. Not as gently as he’d intended to.

  She opened her eyes. She did not reply.

  “You’re dying?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re fucking dying?”

  “I told.”

  “Well, yes, technically you did. But a few more details would have been helpful, don’t you think?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Dying,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Dying,” she said again.

  “Is that why you keep going catatonic?”

  “To keep energy.”

  He went and stood at her bedside. She looked so small against the white sheet.

  He said, “They killed your husband and children back on Nadia.”

  “Grandchildren also.”

  “And they sent you here.”

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Catareen,” he said.

  No response. Her head might have been a stone, carved with lines for mouth and eyes, two holes for nostrils. Only the nostrils betrayed the fact that this was a living being. They fluttered with her breath. They revealed their pallid hints of inner brightness, like circles of illuminated jade.

  “Catareen,” he said, “I don’t know what to do for you. I don’t know what to say to you. I feel like I don’t know anything about you. Anything at all.”

  She did not open her eyes. The conversation was over, then.

  Later, at dinner, Simon and Luke were introduced to the rest of the group. Luke appeared to be recovered. Catareen seemed to prefer remaining in bed, as far as anyone could interpret her preferences.

  They all assembled for dinner at a long table set under the big tree to the immediate east of the house. There were seventeen of them: twelve adults and five children; eight Nadians and nine humans.

  Othea sat at one end of the table, beside Emory. She held in her arms the eighteenth member—an infant, half Nadian and half human.

  Simon had never seen such a being before, though he’d heard the rumors. The baby’s skin was the color of a celery stalk. She (it was a she) had the big, round Nadian eyes and the agitated Nadian nostrils, but in her the eyes were a creamy coffee brown and the nose an Emoryish minibeak upon which the nostrils perched like sea urchins on a sliver of rock. She had ears, perfectly human but dwarfed, like tiny shells. Atop her smooth green head stood a silky fury of fine white-gold hair.

  Emory said to the others, “We seem to have acquired a couple of new members. It is my great honor to introduce Simon and Luke and to express my hope that they will accept my invitation to accompany us all on our journey to Paumanok.”

  There was scattered applause and a general murmur of greeting. In truth, Simon did not find the company especially promising. The human
s were for the most part rather seedy-looking. One woman (she would prove to be the Ruth who was having trouble with the launch coordinates) was sallow and overweight, wearing a battered sun hat and what appeared to be strands of little silver bells around her neck. Another, a man of indeterminate age with a great rust-colored curl of mustache and a chin slightly smaller than an apricot, bobbled his big square head and said, “Welcome, friends, welcome, friends, welcome, friends.” The Nadians were more restrained in their dress and their vocabulary of gestures, but they, too, seemed to possess some vague aspect of off-centeredness. The two females were grim and silent. The males, three of them, had an overeager look uncommon among Nadians. They sat together, whispered among themselves, and broke into occasional fits of high-pitched laughter, during which they pounded one another on their scrawny backs and slapped their slender palms together.

  These, then, were the pilgrims. These were the emissaries to a new world.

  Midway through the meal, Luke leaned over and whispered to Simon, “Geekville, U.S.A.”

  “Shh,” Simon said. He returned his attention to the person seated on his left, a young dark-skinned human scientist named Lily, who had dyed her hair orange and had runes of some kind tattooed onto her cheeks and forehead and did not seem to understand that listening to an unbroken monologue about lift hydraulics in deep space might not be Simon’s idea of an interesting way to spend his entire dinner.

  When the meal was over, the adults resumed their work, and the children scattered across the farmyard. Simon and Luke lingered at the table with Emory, Othea, and the baby.

  Emory said, “They’re a little strange, I know. They have good hearts, though.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Simon answered.

  “I had twice this many when I started. But people come to their senses. They find other things to do. They fall in love with someone who doesn’t want to leave Earth forever.”

  Luke said, “You really want us to come along?”

  “There’s room. And Simon, I hope you won’t be offended if I say that someone as young as Luke would be particularly welcome. The adults who survive the trip at all will be quite old by the time we land on Paumanok.”

  The infant gurgled on Othea’s lap. She rocked the child with a certain insistence Simon recognized as distinctly Nadian. She said, “We need the most diverse possible gene pool among our younger members.”

  Luke said, “So basically you’re interested in my youth and DNA.”

  “You’re Exedrol, right?” Othea asked.

  “Yep.”

  “The deformities are not passed along genetically. Did you know that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Simon said, “I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any.” He had not meant to speak quite so loudly.

  “She doesn’t mean to offend,” Emory said. “Do you, Oth? Nadians are a little more direct than we are is all.”

  “I just can’t seem to get the knack of circumspection,” Othea replied, continuing to rock her child with an urgency Simon could only hope would not be damaging in some long-range, unforeseeable way. “At a certain point I simply decided to give it up altogether.”

  “I find it extremely interesting,” Emory said to Simon, “that you take offense so easily. It’s not in your programming.”

  “My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,” Simon said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Luke said, “being wanted for my youth and my DNA doesn’t bother me at all. In case anybody cares what I think.”

  “Everybody cares what you think,” Simon said.

  Luke said to Emory, “He doesn’t have any particular allegiance to the truth. Do you find that peculiar?”

  “Very,” Emory answered.

  “Please don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Simon said.

  “You’re really making great progress,” Emory told him.

  “Fuck you.”

  “See? See what I mean?”

  Later, Simon sat with Catareen in her upstairs room. Emory and Othea had returned to their work. Luke had joined the children in their farmyard games. Simon could tell from their voices that Luke had introduced certain improvements and refinements and was patiently explaining why such changes were necessary.

  Catareen was asleep. Or doing that sleeplike thing.

  Simon said to her, “They’re nuts, you know. The whole crew.”

  She opened her eyes. She said, “You go with them.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, can you picture being on a spaceship for thirty-eight years with these people?”

  “You go. Happier there.”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  “I dream.”

  “What?”

  “That world. I dream.”

  “What have you dreamed?”

  “You go to mountains. Changed. As you want.”

  “You’ve dreamed of me changed, walking in some kind of mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you had a dream like that before?”

  “No.”

  “And so you think I should go with them. You think I should spend the next thirty-eight years on a spaceship with these idiots because you dreamed I’d be happier on another planet.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re crazy, too.”

  She made some sort of breathy sound he had never heard from her before, a modest three-note trill.

  “Did you laugh?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Yes. You did. That was actual laughter. I’ll be goddamned.”

  She made the sound again.

  He leaned over her. He said, “Are you in pain?”

  “No pain.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Dying.”

  “More specific, please.”

  “Less. Am less.”

  “You feel like you’re less.”

  “Room is big. Bright.”

  “You feel like the room has gotten bigger and brighter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I seem bigger and brighter?”

  “Loud, too.”

  He lowered his voice. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No. I like.”

  “You like me being big and bright and loud?”

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes then, and slipped away.

  Simon went downstairs again and walked onto the front porch of the farmhouse. The evening sky was dull red, striped with cloud tatters of livid orange. He could hear the children’s voices but could not see them. Soon, however, Luke ran into view. He was being chased by Twyla, who brandished the pool-cue spear. Her cardboard wings rattled behind her. Luke shrieked. Simon could not determine whether he was delighted or terrified.

  When Luke saw Simon he immediately stopped running. He collected himself. He seemed to wish to appear as if he had never run or shrieked in his life. Twyla stopped as well. She stood examining the point of the spear, as if that had been her true objective, while Luke approached Simon on the porch.

  Luke said, “Geekville, U.S.A.”

  “You seem to be having a reasonably good time,” Simon answered.

  “I’m mingling with the locals. I can pass for just about anything.”

  He ambled up onto the porch and stood beside Simon, looking out at the deepening sky. Twyla remained where she stood, adjusting the knife on the end of the pool cue.

  Luke said, “I’ve been thinking. I might want to go with them.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “To tell you the truth, I like the idea of being a valued member. As opposed to being, say, stuck in Denver again, with no money.”

  “I understand that.”

  “And you?”

  “They’re an odd bunch.”

  “No question.”

  “Emory thinks he could make some modifications on me during the trip.”

  “That’d be good.”

  “It would.”

  “And you know,” Luk
e said, “I’d rather go if you go, too. You’ve come to feel familiar to me.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Okay. See you later, then.”

  “See you.”

  Luke left the porch and went back out to the place where the little Nadian stood waiting for him. She did not raise the spear as he approached. They spoke to each other softly. Simon could not make out what they said. They went off together, away from the house and the barn, in the direction of the open country.

  The next morning, Catareen was more receded. She appeared smaller in the small white bed. She lay compactly atop the sheet with her eyes closed, breathing rapidly and shallowly. She had folded her hands over her abdomen. Her legs were pressed together. It appeared as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible, as if death were a narrow aperture and she had to be ready to slip through.

  Apart from her rapid breathing, there was no sign of illness. And yet she was diminishing. Simon could see it. No. He could apprehend it. Her flesh was unaffected, but she was drawing in, as if some animating force were retreating inward from the skin’s surface. Her skin was darker now, more deeply emerald. It put out a slick, mineral shine. She was becoming not alive.

  She awakened, however, when Simon entered the room. Her eyes were changed. They were fading from orange to a deep, unhealthy-looking yellow, like egg yolks gone bad.

  “Good morning,” Simon said. “How do you feel?”

  “Dying,” she answered.

  “But no pain.”

  “No much.”

  “Do you think you could eat something?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not irradiated groundhog, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He stood beside her. Still, even in extremis, there was this feeling that they were on a date that wasn’t going well but refused to end. He made to put his hand on her forehead but decided she probably wouldn’t want him to. Besides, it would have been an empty gesture, a ritual expression of concern for the afflicted. There was no point in performing such gestures for a Nadian.

  He said, “They killed your family and sent you to Earth.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder—”

  She waited for him to finish the question. He waited as well. He hadn’t been sure when he launched that sentence where, exactly, he expected it to land, though he could think of any number of possibilities. I wonder if that’s why you’re so remote and strange. I wonder if that’s why you came with me. I wonder if you helped me because you feel guilty about what you brought down on your own family.