by Nancy Kress
So young Cameron Atuli had to have cooperated in putting his face on chimpanzees.
But that didn’t make sense either. Like Maggie, I’d left Shana alone in the living room long enough for hasty research in the deebees. Cameron Atuli was one of the world’s most promising young dancers. I’m not much interested in ballet, but there are those who are, and they raved that Atuli was “luminous,” “radiant,” “penetrating,” “dazzlingly fast”—all those wavelength-oriented adjectives so curiously applied to performance art. Atuli had a brilliant future. It would make him rich, if he wasn’t already. And he was insularly, discreetly homosexual, which meant he would do well to keep a low off-stage profile. He had no reason to be part of an illegal tissue engineering experiment, and much reason not to. It didn’t make sense.
Unless either he’d been blackmailed into cooperation, or the MOSS and tissue samples had been taken without his consent. Blackmail was always a possibility for anyone gay—no, that was the word of my youth, it was “blithe” now—but for Atuli it didn’t seem likely. The shared-responsibility crowd, religious or not, didn’t go in much for ballet. The vids regarded it as an unimportant and dying cultural footnote. Atuli had, according to the records, no family to threaten (his parents, both soldiers, had died in South America) and no inherited fortune. And he lived in Aldani House. Endowed by a passionate patron, Aldani House was a safe, secluded oasis for dancers, of all sexual and political orientations. No, blackmail didn’t seem likely.
“Hey, remember me?” Shana said. “I’m still here, Doctor!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking. Our next step should be to talk to some people I know.”
“What sort of people?”
“Police,” I said, to see what she’d say. But Shana only nodded. I grew more and more sure that her story was true.
“Okay, police. Why?”
“Because there are things here that don’t make sense.”
“No kidding. Hey, something smells good.”
“Dinner is served, Dr. Clementi,” the house system said.
“About time. I’m fucking empty.” Then she added casually, “You still eat okay?”
I led the way to the dining room. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t try to woof me, Doctor. I been around old people my whole life. How much longer you got?”
I stopped cold and turned around to stare at her.
“Ooohhh,” she said. “Your wife don’t know yet.”
“Shana—”
“On,” she said. “I won’t say nothing. What kind is it?”
She was so matter-of-fact. Were all the young like this, casually accepting death all around them? When I’d been young, death had been hidden away, in hospitals and nursing homes and back bedrooms. Now it wouldn’t stay in those discreet cubbyholes; there was too much of it. Like weather, it was ubiquitous even when inconvenient.
Thou knowest ’tis common; all that live must die—
“I have a brain disease.” It was an unexpected relief to say it aloud.
“Could be worse. You’ll probably just pop off one of these days. What’s for dinner, do you know?”
“Roast beef,” I said, and had to laugh. A well-crafted death, I’d wanted. Among heirs for whom the craft was as common as breath. And as boring as ballet.
“Wonderful,” Shana said. “I love roast beef. Let’s eat.”
* * *
The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration stood to greet me as I entered his office. “Nick!” he cried, taking both his hands in mine and smiling warmly, his eyes wary. I felt all over again, as I had felt for over fifty years, the intense contradictions in the man.
Vanderbilt Grant and I been at Harvard Medical School together, a million years ago in the 1970s. He had fascinated and bewildered me then—fascinated and bewildered all of us medical students from small, ordered towns with small, ordered lives. But Van’s contradictions had begun long before Harvard. His father had been a black jazz musician; his mother a Vanderbilt, an American princess slumming in the New York “beat” scene in the 1950s; his birth a family scandal. Later, in the civil-rights era, ten-year-old Van had registered voters in a racially embattled South. At college, he’d been an angry black activist—but never a violent one. Work within the system, he’d urged students bent on storming the administration building, and bring the fascists down that way. “They gonna yield to what’s right.” The ghetto slang was false; as radical grew chic, Van had taken to spending his summers with his Vanderbilt cousins at Newport and Bar Harbor. He was a wicked tennis player, and could have been an Olympic swimmer if he’d taken it seriously, which he didn’t. “Nothing momentous was ever decided in a swimming pool.”
Then he’d gone to medical school, graduating first in our class, and worked himself up to chief of medicine at New York Hospital in Queens. By 2020, he was married and rich, living on the water in Connecticut, dividing his spare time between golf and the free black clinics in the Bronx. His Wall Street friends respected his ability to invest his growing fortune cannily and well. His grandchildren attended Groton.
The Tipping Point changed all that. Blacks, disproportionate at the bottom of the social scale, were hit hard as government programs, even such basics as police, were slashed. Van left New York Hospital and took to the streets. He organized and preached—by this time he’d become a born-again Christian—and ordered and cajoled and, some say, personally kept much of New York from exploding into unstoppable destruction. When the crisis was over, he was a national figure. President Combes appointed him FDA Commissioner as the first act of his first term. Washington rumor was that Combes had personally begged Van Grant to take over the FDA. Somehow, Van was acceptable to everybody: religious, minorities, the scientific community, the poor, big business, even the drug companies. “You can reason with him,” the pharmaceutical houses said, “he’s not a rigid bureaucrat.” Vanderbilt Grant was the first FDA Commissioner ever to attain an 82% public recognition rate. More Americans knew his name than knew who was Vice President.
His contradictions grew deeper than ever. Sincerely warm, and yet always with that reserve, that aloof place you could never touch. Genuinely compassionate toward the bottom level of society, and yet he advocated a stern morality of individual responsibility. Charismatic and self-righteous, ruthless and kind, black and conservative, Vanderbilt Grant forged his own way, smiling and bellowing, and the political pundits were always two steps behind. He changed position constantly, and never looked as if he waffled. Every position, he said, was deeply felt, and people believed it. He was the perfect Washington politician.
He was not a perfect friend, as I well knew. You couldn’t get close enough to him. And yet it was Van Grant whom I’d asked to be best man at my wedding. Van Grant who had sponsored Alana as a candidate for Mars emigration. Van Grant who had plucked me, upon my retirement from the Institute, and basted me into the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises.
He stood in front of me now, holding both my hands, beaming. Wiry and upright, he looked fifteen years younger than I. His voice, that famous deep and melodious voice, was full of restrained power, like a good sax that might at any moment cut loose from the melody and really soar. It was a voice that people always remembered.
“It’s good to see you again, Nick! How long has it been? Never mind, we don’t need any reminders of our age.” He laughed, a gut-deep chuckle, while his eyes studied me. I saw him note my drooping eye and bad color. Van had been a brilliant diagnostician. “What can I do for you, Nick?”
“A favor,” I said, seating myself in a comfortable chair. Teak desk, leather chairs, the latest in wall programming, sculptures by black street artists, an American flag hand-embroidered. “I’m on the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises.”
Van nodded; his recommendation had put me there.
“The Committee and I don’t see eye-to-eye, Van, as you already know—but it’s getting worse. They refuse to even loo
k at the causes of the fertility crisis. Over and over I point out the studies—there are more of them every month—telling us that human infertility is caused by all the cumulative endocrine disrupters we’ve put into the environment.”
Amazing studies, to anyone who read them. But most people preferred to look the other way. Oh, it’s mostly Africa, they said, because that desperate continent had been the hardest hit, having used the most heavy chemicals in its futile attempts to control insects and crops and disease. But it wasn’t mostly Africa. The majority of endocrine disrupters are wind-borne. The studies that the Congressional Advisory Committee so carefully ignored revealed critical accumulations of disrupters in the tissues of Arctic polar bears, of Pacific Island bush rats, of South American spider monkeys.
“The Committee keeps saying ‘inconclusive evidence,’” I continued, “because the data is evidential. Rather than being the kind of thing you can subject to laboratory proof.”
Van nodded again; he knew all this, of course. Somehow he’d managed to support both sides at once, by publicly stressing that causes of a problem are less important than solutions, and what can we do now? On him, it didn’t look like fence-sitting. It looked like a call to vigor and action.
I went on, “But my favor concerns something more specific than that. There’s something besides butt-covering and pig-headedness going on with the Committee. Listen to this.”
I retold Shana Walders’s story, and the Committee’s eagerness to dismiss it as lies. “Usually they jump on any kind of animal-human hybrid and bray about it to the media. It’s a good way to get credit for action without actually doing anything, such as looking closely at endocrine disrupters. But this time they want the possibility of an illegal hybrid to just go away. Why?”
Van steepled his fingers and considered, watching me intently. He’d always been a good listener. “Well, Nick, have you considered that more and more, Congress just sort of stays away from anything involving vivifacture? That could be the reason the Committee doesn’t want to look too deeply into your girl’s story.”
“I thought of that, of course. They don’t want to get the RPs all worked up over human knee joints grown on baboons and cosmetic skin grafts grown on the backs of cats. The less said, the better. But I think there’s more going on here.”
“And why is that?”
I told him about Shana’s tracking down Cameron Atuli. Van’s face didn’t change. When I’d finished, he said, “That’s interesting. Fascinating, in fact. But I don’t see what it’s got to do with me. What are you asking for here?”
“I need an FBI case file search. To see if Cameron Atuli has been involved in any way with any illegal genetic or vivifacture activity. The Committee could request one officially, but I don’t want it officially. I just want it.”
“Can’t do it, Nick. You know that. FDA and FBI are two separate organizations.”
“Bullshit,” I said genially. “Your investigators are out there in the field checking animal tests for new drug applications, monitoring clinical trials, polling outside experts for medical review. Your guys hear everything, including all the leads to illegal activity. You can’t tell me, Van, that your organization hasn’t gotten tighter and tighter with the FBI as the range of federal genetic violations has grown. You funnel information to the Bureau’s Criminal Genetics Section all the time.”
He was too smart to deny it. “And if we do? What makes you think it’s a two-way street?”
“Because everything in Washington is,” I said. “Van, don’t treat me like—what do the kids say?—a ‘stewdee.’ A stupid deformity.”
He gave me that sudden, blinding smile. “Never in this world, Nick. Not you. Okay, let’s say I could theoretically find out if Cameron Atuli is on record as ever being involved in any illegal vivifacture. Why do you want to know?”
“I want to find out if Shana Walders’s story really is true.”
His voice, that amazing instrument, deepened a tone. “You’ve interested yourself in the girl.”
“Well, the young are a natural resource, aren’t they? So we keep saying. And she’s a promising child.”
Again that warm chuckle. And, casually, “How’s John doing these days?”
“About the same.” Oh, he was good. He’d let me know he understood why I might be driven to help a “promising” child. But he did it with the lightest touch.
“And Maggie? Seems ages since Helen and I saw you folks.”
“She’s fine. You’ll help me on this, Van?”
“I will,” he said, and laughed because it reminded both of us of the wedding ceremony, when I’d married Maggie with Van by my side. “You know I will.”
“You’ll find out if Cameron Atuli has any recorded involvement, as perpetrator or victim? With either genetic violations or vivifacture violations, up to and including kidnapping for cell samples?” With Van, it was best to make agreements clear and specific. He was too good at sliding out from under fuzzy ones.
“Yes.”
“And can I count on hearing from you soon?”
His gaze strayed, seemingly casually, to my drooping eye, then back to my face. “This week, Nick.”
“Thanks, Van.”
I stood, aware of how shaky I must seem next to him, even though he was in fact a few years the elder. He would go on to a full afternoon’s work; I wanted to go home and go to bed.
“Take care of yourself, Nick.” In that rich voice, it was a benediction. A prayer from the healthy, on behalf of the rest of us.
“Well?” Shana demanded, out on the street where I’d left her. An old man panhandled against the sunny south wall of the building. A woman walked past, pushing a stroller with two kittens in it. A holosign winked and revolved: WE CAN DO IT TOGETHER. SHARE THE COMMUNITY OF AMERICA! On the corner, a religious crazy teetered on the curb and shouted about the end of the world. His projector, very old, was malfunctioning: through the crude holos of tidal waves and earthquakes flickered scenes from what looked like an instructional holo on quilting. “Hey, Nick, you okay?”
Each of us earns our own death, which belongs to no one else. George Seferis.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m doing fine. Let’s go home.”
9
CAMERON ATULI
It’s an hour before the curtain goes up at Lincoln Center on Jupiter Moon Suite, and backstage is chaos. The guest dancers, Eric Carter of the Royal Ballet and Vivian Vargas of what is left of the New York City Ballet, are both pigs. Carter insulted Sarah, telling her that she moved like a tugboat, and Sarah ran out of rehearsal in tears. Vargas talks constantly about the past greatness of the NYCB, even though now it’s a pathetic shambles. She makes it clear that she disdains Aldani House, but she is so beautiful that Dmitri follows her like a slave, greatly upsetting Laura, who is in love with him. Joaquim has torn a tendon and cannot dance the role of The Interloper. Tasha, for no reason anyone can see, snaps at everyone. The air prickles with tension.
I am hurrying along the dreary understage corridors to bring Joaquim more ice for his knee when Melita stops me. “Cameron, dear!”
“Yes?” This is bad. Melita, who is only in her fifties but dresses like a grand dame, is a superb business manager for Aldani House. Mr. C. couldn’t manage without her. But no one would say she is warm. When she calls dancers “dear,” we brace ourselves.
“It’s about the reception after tonight’s performance, dear. For the patrons.”
I groan. NYCB, to whom Lincoln Center is still home, always needs money. Almost every performance, even by a visiting company, is followed by a “reception” to wring more money out of patrons by letting them mingle with dancers, most of whom hate it. It’s very hard to talk to these corporate leaders and politicians and society ladies. They don’t know very much about dance, and what they do know is wrong.
I say, “Raising money for the NYCB isn’t our job. Let prima donna Vargas do it.”
Melita ignores this, as she ignored my groan. Already dresse
d for the gala, she wears a diamond barrette in her hair. The barrette is fake, I know: the real one was sold long ago to finance a special production of Mozartiana. “Cameron, that’s why I wanted to speak to you. Not all the fund raising tonight will be for NYCB. I’ve just heard that there’s going to be present a patron ready to pledge Aldani House fifty thousand dollars. With that much, maybe we can mount a new ballet next season.”
Her eyes shine; the Aldani House endowment covers the basics, but not such extravagances as a complete new ballet. I suddenly feel contrite. Melita is as committed to Aldani House as any of us dancers—maybe more. “All right, Melita, I’ll come and mingle.”
“You’ll do more than that. This woman has asked specifically to meet you. She’s a great admirer. I want you to talk to her, and her alone, for at least a half hour straight. No, don’t look like that—she’s very easy to talk to.”
I’m appalled. Half an hour! “I can’t!”
“Half an hour straight, Cameron. Her name is Mrs. Justine Locke. And dance well, dear.” She waves her hand and bustles on down the corridor, her evening gown swishing, while I stand there with Joaquim’s ice melting all over my hands.
The performance goes well enough, although Mitchell is not really up to Joaquim’s role and the decaying New York State Theater is less than a third full. New York is a financial ruin, Rob told me; it’s possible that NYCB will not survive at all. Also, Laura is clearly fighting back tears and stumbles on a simple pas de chat. But Eric Carter, damn his beautiful shoulders, dances Jupiter like the god himself, and the third movement of the suite, “Europa,” has an energy and harmony that brings the small audience to its feet.
Afterwards, still in my sweaty costume, I go reluctantly to the Promenade. The Promenade is a great empty indoor plaza surrounded by walls of glass, which are noticeably dirty. Three tiers of wrought-iron balconies circle the glass, but they’re too shaky to stand on. On the stairs, badly mended slashes in the red carpet look dangerous to high heels. I pass empty pedestals where, Vivian Vargas said, there once stood huge dramatic sculptures. She doesn’t know of what. They were sold to pay Lincoln Center utilities before Vargas even joined the company. Now the lighting is dim everywhere except at the party itself, and even there it couldn’t be called bright. Maybe patrons find that romantic.
