by Nancy Kress
The UN finally agreed, and the structure went into orbit around Earth, landed without a splash in the harbor, and floated peacefully offshore. After landing, it grew wider and flatter, a half-dome that could be considered either an island or a ship. The U.S. government decided it was a ship, subject to maritime law, and the media began capitalizing and italicizing it: the Embassy. Coast Guard craft circled it endlessly; the U.S. Navy had ships and submarines nearby. Airspace above was a no-fly zone, which was inconvenient for jets landing at New York’s three big airports. Fighter jets nearby stayed on high alert.
Nothing happened.
For another two months the aliens continued to talk through their machines to the UN, and only to the UN, and nobody ever saw them. It wasn’t known whether they were shielding themselves from Earth’s air, microbes, or armies. The Embassy was surveilled by all possible means. If anybody learned anything, the information was classified except for a single exchange:
Why are you here?
To make contact with humanity. A peace mission.
A musician set the repeated phrases to music, a sly and humorous refrain, without menace. The song, an instant international sensation, was the opening for playfulness about the aliens. Late-night comics built monologues around supposed alien practices. The Embassy became a tourist attraction, viewed through telescopes, from boats outside the Coast Guard limit, from helicopters outside the no-fly zone. A German fashion designer scored an enormous runway hit with “the Deneb look,” despite the fact that no one knew how the Denebs looked. The stock market stabilized as much as it ever did. Quickie movies were shot, some with Deneb allies and some with treacherous Deneb foes who wanted our women or gold or bombs. Bumper stickers proliferated like kudzu: I BRAKE FOR DENEBS. EARTH IS FULL ALREADY—GO HOME. DENEBS DO IT INVISIBLY. WILL TRADE PHYSICS FOR FOOD.
The aliens never commented on any of it. They published the promised physics, which only a few dozen people in the world could understand. They were courteous, repetitive, elusive. Why are you here? To make contact with humanity. A peace mission.
Marianne stared at the TV, where CNN showed footage of disabled children choosing Halloween costumes. Nothing about the discussion, the room, the situation felt real. Why would the aliens want to talk to her? It had to be about her paper, nothing else made sense. No, that didn’t make sense either.
“—donated by a network of churches from five states. Four-year-old Amy seizes eagerly on the black-cat costume, while her friend Kayla chooses—”
Her paper was one of dozens published every year on evolutionary genetics, each paper adding another tiny increment to statistical data on the subject. Why this one? Why her? The UN Secretary-General, various presidents and premiers, top scientists—the press said they all talked to the Denebs from this modern fortress, through (pick one) highly encrypted devices that permitted no visuals, or one-way visuals, or two-way visuals that the UN was keeping secret, or not at all and the whole alien-human conversation was invented. The Embassy, however, was certainly real. Images of it appeared on magazine covers, coffee mugs, screen savers, tee shirts, paintings on velvet, targets for shooting ranges.
Marianne’s daughter Elizabeth regarded the aliens with suspicion, but then, Elizabeth regarded everyone with suspicion. It was one reason she was the youngest Border Patrol section leader in the country, serving on the New York Task Force along with several other agencies. She fit right in with the current American obsession with isolationism as an economic survival strategy.
Ryan seldom mentioned the aliens. He was too absorbed in his career and his wife.
And Noah—did Noah, her problem child, even realize the aliens were here? Marianne hadn’t seen Noah in months. In the spring he had gone to “try life in the South.” An occasional e-mail turned up on her phone, never containing much actual information. If Noah was back in New York, he hadn’t called her yet. Marianne didn’t want to admit what a relief that was. Her child, her baby—but every time they saw each other, it ended in recriminations or tears.
And what was she doing, thinking about her children instead of the aliens? Why did the ambassador want to talk to her? Why were the Denebs here?
To make contact with humanity. A peace mission. . . .
“Dr. Jenner?”
“Yes.” She stood up from her chair, her jaw set. Somebody better give her some answers, now.
The young man looked doubtfully at her clothes, dark jeans and a green suede blazer ten years old, her standard outfit for faculty parties. He said, “Secretary Desai will join you shortly.”
Marianne tried to let her face show nothing. A few moments later Vihaan Desai, Secretary-General of the United Nations, entered the room, followed by a security detail. Tall, elderly, he wore a sky-blue kurta of heavy, richly embroidered silk. Marianne felt like a wren beside a peacock. Desai held out his hand but did not smile. Relations between the United States and India were not good. Relations between the United States and everybody were not good, as the country relentlessly pursued its new policy of economic isolationism in an attempt to protect jobs. Until the Denebs came, with their cosmos-shaking distraction, the UN had been thick with international threats. Maybe it still was.
“Dr. Jenner,” Desai said, studying her intently, “it seems we are both summoned to an interstellar conference.” His English, in the musical Indian accent, was perfect. Marianne remembered that he spoke four languages.
She said, “Do you know why?”
Her directness made him blink. “I do not. The Deneb ambassador was insistent but not forthcoming.”
And does humanity do whatever the ambassador insists on? Marianne did not say this aloud. Something here was not adding up. The Secretary-General’s next words stunned her.
“We, plus a few others, are invited aboard the Embassy. The invitation is dependent upon your presence, and upon its immediate acceptance.”
“Aboard . . . aboard the Embassy?”
“It seems so.”
“But nobody has ever—”
“I am well aware of that.” The dark, intelligent eyes never left her face. “We await only the other guests who happen to be in New York.”
“I see.” She didn’t.
Desai turned to his security detail and spoke to them in Hindi. An argument began. Did security usually argue with their protectees? Marianne wouldn’t have thought so, but then, what did she know about UN protocol? She was out of her field, her league, her solar system. Her guess was that the Denebs were not allowing bodyguards aboard the Embassy, and that the security chief was protesting.
Evidently the Secretary-General won. He said to her, “Please come,” and walked with long strides from the room. His kurta rustled at his ankles, shimmering sky. Not intuitive, Marianne could nonetheless sense the tension coming off him like heat. They went down a long corridor, trailed by deeply frowning guards, and down an elevator. Very far down—did the elevator go under the harbor? It must. They exited into a small room already occupied by two people, a man and a woman. Marianne recognized the woman: Ekaterina Zaytsev, the representative to the UN from the Russian Federation. The man might be the Chinese representative. Both looked agitated.
Desai said in English, “We await only—ah, here they are.”
Two much younger men practically blew into the room, clutching headsets. Translators. They looked disheveled and frightened, which made Marianne feel better. She wasn’t the only one battling an almost overwhelming sense of unreality. If only Evan could be here, with his sardonic and unflappable Britishness. “Or so we thought. . . .”
No. Neither she nor Evan had ever thought of this.
“The other permanent members of the Security Council are unfortunately not immediately available,” Desai said. “We will not wait.”
Marianne couldn’t remember who the other permanent members were. The UK, surely, but who else? How many? What were they doing this October dusk that would make them miss first contact with an alien species? Whatever it was, they had t
o regret it the rest of their lives.
Unless, of course, this little delegation never returned—killed or kidnapped or eaten. No, that was ridiculous. She was being hysterical. Desai would not go if there were danger.
Of course he would. Anyone would. Wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t she? Nobody, she suddenly realized, had actually asked her to go on this mission. She’d been ordered to go. What if she flat-out refused?
A door opened at the far end of the small room, voices spoke from the air about clearance and proceeding, and then another elevator. The six people stepped into what had to be the world’s most comfortable and unwarlike submarine, equipped with lounge chairs and gold-braided officers.
A submarine. Well, that made sense, if plans had been put in place to get to the Embassy unobserved by press, tourists, and nut jobs who would blow up the alien base if they could. The Denebs must have agreed to some sort of landing place or entryway, which meant this meeting had been talked of, planned for, long before today. Today was just the moment the aliens had decided to put the plan into practice. Why? Why so hastily?
“Dr. Jenner,” Desai said, “in the short time we have here, please explain your scientific findings to us.”
None of them sat in the lounge chairs. They stood in a circle around Marianne, who felt none of the desire to toy with them as she had with Dr. Curtis at the college. Where were her words going, besides this cramped, luxurious submarine? Was the president of the United States listening, packed into the situation room with whoever else belonged there?
“My paper is nothing startling, Mr. Secretary-General, which is why this is all baffling to me. In simple terms—” she tried to not be distracted by the murmuring of the two translators into their mouthpieces “—all humans alive today are the descendants of one woman who lived about 150,000 years ago. We know this because of mitochondrial DNA, which is not the DNA from the nucleus of the cell but separate DNA found in small organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria, which exist in every cell of your body, are the powerhouses of the cell, producing energy for cellular functions. Mitochondrial DNA does not undergo recombination and is not found in a sperm cell after it reaches the egg. So the mitochondrial DNA is passed down unchanged from a mother to all her children.”
Marianne paused, wondering how to explain this simply, but without condescension. “Mitochondrial DNA mutates at a steady rate, about one mutation every 10,000 years in a section called ‘the control region,’ and about once every 3,500 years in the mitochondrial DNA as a whole. By tracing the number and type of mutations in contemporary humans, we can construct a tree of descent: which group descended from which female ancestor.
“Evolutionary biologists have identified thirty of these haplogroups. I found a new one, L7, by sequencing and comparing DNA samples with a standard human mitochondrial sample, known as the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence.”
“How did you know where to look for this new group?”
“I didn’t. I came across the first sample by chance and then sampled her relatives.”
“Is it very different, then, from the others?”
“No,” Marianne said. “It’s just a branch of the L haplogroup.”
“Why wasn’t it discovered before?”
“It seems to be rare. The line must have mostly died out over time. It’s a very old line, one of the first divergences from Mitochondrial Eve.”
“So there is nothing remarkable about your finding?”
“Not in the least. There may even be more haplogroups out there that we just haven’t discovered yet.” She felt a perfect fool. They all looked at her as if expecting answers—Look! A blinding scientific light illuminate all!—and she had none. She was a workman scientist who had delivered a workmanlike job of fairly routine haplotyping.
“Sir, we have arrived,” said a junior officer. Marianne saw that his dress blues were buttoned wrong. They must have been donned in great haste. The tiny, human mishap made her feel better.
Desai drew a deep, audible breath. Even he, who had lived through war and revolution, was nervous. Commands flew through the air from invisible people. The submarine door opened.
Marianne stepped out into the alien ship.
NOAH
“Where’s Mom? Did you call her?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Not yet,” Noah said.
“Does she even know you’re in New York?”
“Not yet.” He wanted to tell his sister to stop hammering at him, but he was her guest and so he couldn’t. Not that he’d ever been able to stand up to either of his siblings. His usual ploy had been to get them battering on each other and leave him alone. Maybe he could do that now. Or maybe not.
“Noah, how long have you been in the city?”
“A while.”
“How long a while?”
Noah put his hand in front of his face. “Lizzie, I’m really hungry. I didn’t eat today. Do you think you could—”
“Don’t start your whining-and-helpless routine with me, Noah. It doesn’t work anymore.”
Had it ever? Noah didn’t think so, not with Elizabeth. He tried to pull himself together. “Elizabeth, I haven’t called Mom yet and I am hungry. Please, could we defer this fight until I eat something? Anything, crackers or toast or—”
“There’s sandwich stuff in the fridge. Help yourself. I’m going to call Mom, since at least one of us should let her know the prodigal son has deigned to turn up again. She’s been out of her mind with worry about you.”
Noah doubted that. His mother was the strongest person he knew, followed by Elizabeth and Ryan. Together, the three could have toppled empires. Of course, they seldom were together, since they fought almost every time they met. Odd that they would go on meeting so often, when it produced such bitterness, and all over such inconsequential things. Politics, religion, funding for the arts, isolationism. . . . He rummaged in Elizabeth’s messy refrigerator, full of plastic containers with their lids half off, some with dabs of rotting food stuck to the bottom. God, this one was growing mold. But he found bread, cheese, and some salsa that seemed all right.
Elizabeth’s one-bedroom apartment echoed her fridge, which was another reason she and Mom fought. Unmade bed, dusty stacks of journals and newspapers, a vase of dead flowers probably sent by one of the boyfriends Elizabeth never fell in love with. Mom’s house north of the city, and Ryan and Connie’s near hers, were neat and bright. House-cleaners came weekly; food was bought from careful lists; possessions were replaced whenever they got shabby. Noah had no possessions, or at least as few as he could manage.
Elizabeth clutched the phone. She dressed like a female FBI agent—short hair, dark pantsuit, no make-up—and was beautiful without trying. “Come on, Mom, pick up,” she muttered, “it’s a cell, it’s supposed to be portable.”
“Maybe she’s in class,” Noah said. “Or a meeting.”
“It’s Friday night, Noah.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“I’ll try the landline. She still has one.”
Someone answered the landline on the first ring; Noah heard the chime stop from where he sat munching his sandwich. Then silence.
“Hello? Hello? Mom?” Elizabeth said.
The receiver on the other end clicked.
“That’s odd,” Elizabeth said.
“You probably got a wrong number.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. I’m going to try again.”
This time no one answered. Elizabeth scowled. “I don’t like that. Someone is there. I’m going to call Ryan.”
Wasn’t Ryan somewhere in Canada doing field work? Or maybe Noah had the dates wrong. He’d only glanced at the e-mail from Ryan, accessed on a terminal at the public library. That day he’d been on sugarcane, and the temporary identity had been impatient and brusque.
“Ryan? This is Elizabeth. Do you know where Mom is? . . . If I knew her schedule I wouldn’t be calling, would I? . . . Wait, wait, will you listen for a minute? I called her house and someone
picked up and then clicked off, and when I called back a second later, it just rang. Will you go over there just to check it out? . . . Okay, yes, we’ll wait. Oh, Noah’s here. . . . No, I’m not going to discuss with you right now the . . . Ryan. For chrissake, go check Mom’s house!” She clicked off.
Noah wished he were someplace else. He wished he were somebody else. He wished he had some sugarcane.
Elizabeth flounced into a chair and picked up a book. Tariffs, Borders, and the Survival of the United States, Noah read upside-down. Elizabeth was a passionate defender of isolationism. How many desperate people trying to crash the United States borders had she arrested today? Noah didn’t want to think about it.
Fifteen minutes later, Ryan called back. Elizabeth put the call on speaker phone. “Liz, there are cop cars around Mom’s house. They wouldn’t let me in. A guy came out and said Mom isn’t dead or hurt or in trouble, and he couldn’t tell me any more than that.”
“Okay.” Elizabeth wore her focused look, the one with which she directed border patrols. “I’ll try the college.”
“I did. I reached Evan. He said that three men claiming to be FBI came and escorted her to the UN Special Mission Headquarters in Manhattan.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“I know. Listen, I’m coming over to your place.”
“I’m calling the police.”
“No! Don’t! Not until I get there and we decide what to do.”
Noah listened to them argue, which went on until Ryan hung up. Of course Elizabeth, who worked for a quasi-military organization, wanted to call the cops. Of course Ryan, who worked for a wildlife organization that thought the government had completely messed up regulations on invasive botanical species, would shun the cops. Meanwhile Mom was probably just doing something connected with her college, a UN fundraiser or something, and that geek Evan had gotten it all wrong. Noah didn’t like Evan, who was only a few years older than he was. Evan was everything that Noah’s family thought Noah should be: smart, smooth, able to fit in anyplace, even into a country that wasn’t his own. And how come Elizabeth’s border patrols hadn’t kept out Evan Blanford?
