by Nancy Kress
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 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 in 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 A. He felt flooded with anticlimactic letdown. 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 areas of the Embassy were restricted.
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 past 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 Embas
sy 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 adjoining 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 Guiterrez, 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.”
Startled, Marianne gazed at him. The vaguely racist reference was uncharacteristic of Evan, and had been said with some bitterness. She realized all over again how little Evan gave away about his past. When had he lived in the Philippines? What had happened between him and some apparently not forgiven houseboy? A former lover? Evan’s sexual orientation was also something they never discussed, although of course she was aware of it. From his grim face, he wasn’t going to discuss it now, either.
She said, “I’m going to ask Smith what the Denebs intend.”
Evan’s smooth grin had returned. “Good luck. The UN can’t get information from him, the project’s chief scientists can’t get information from him, and you and I never see him. Just minor roadblocks to your plan.”
“We really are lab rats,” she said. And then, abruptly, “Let’s go. We need to get back to work.”
Evan said slowly, “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What?”
“The origin of viruses. How they didn’t evolve from a single entity and don’t have a common ancestor. About the theory that their individual origins were pieces of DNA or RNA that broke off from cells and learned to spread to other cells.”
Marianne frowned. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I don’t either, actually.”
“Then—”
“I don’t know,” Evan said. And again, “I just don’t know.”
NOAH
Noah was somebody else.
He’d spent his blood-for-the-Denebs money on sugarcane, and it turned out to be one of the really good transformations. He was a nameless soldier from a nameless army: brave and commanding and sure of himself. Underneath he knew it was an illusion (but he never used to know that!). However, it didn’t matter. He stood on a big rock at the south end of Central Park, rain and discarded plastic bags blowing around him, and felt completely, if temporarily, happy. He was on top of the world, or at least seven feet above it, and nothing seemed impossible.
The alien token in his pocket began to chime, a strange syncopated rhythm, atonal as no iPhone ever sounded. Without a second’s hesitation—he could face anything!—Noah pulled it from his pocket and pressed its center.
A woman’s voice said, “Noah Richard Jenner?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“This is Dr. Lisa Guiterrez at the Deneb embassy. We would like to see you, please. Can you come as soon as possible to the UN Special Mission Headquarters at its pier?”
Noah drew a deep breath. Then full realization crashed around him, loud and blinding as last week’s flashbang. Oh my God—why hadn’t he seen it before? Maybe because he hadn’t been a warrior before. His mother had—son of a bitch—
“Noah?”
He said, “I’ll be there.”
The submarine surfaced in an undersea chamber. A middle-aged woman in jeans and blazer, presumably Dr. Guiterrez, awaited Noah in the featureless room. He didn’t much notice woman or room. Striding across the gangway, he said, “I want to see my mother. Now. She’s Dr. Marianne Jenner, working here someplace.”
Dr. Guiterrez didn’t react as if this were news, or strange. She said, “You seem agitated.” Hers was the human voice Noah had heard coming from the alien token.
“I am agitated! Where is my mother?”
“She’s here. But first, someone else wants to meet you.”
“I demand to see my mother!”
A door in the wall slid open, and a tall man with coppery skin and bare feet stepped through. Noah looked at him, and it happened again.
Shock, bewilderment, totally unjustified recognition—he knew this man, just as he had known the nurse who washed tear gas from his and a child’s eyes during the West Side demonstration. Yet he’d never seen him before, and he was an alien. But the sense of kinship was powerful, disorienting, ridiculous.
“Hello, Noah Jenner,” the ceiling said. “I am Ambassador Smith. Welcome to the Embassy.”
“I—”
“I wanted to welcome you personally, but I cannot visit now. I have a meeting. Lisa will help you get settled here, should you choose to stay with us for a while. She will explain everything. Let me just say—”
Impossible to deny this man’s sincerity, he meant every incredible word—
“—that I’m very glad you are here.”
After the alien left, Noah stood staring at the door through which he’d vanished. “What is it?” Dr. Guiterrez said. “You look a bit shocked.”
Noah blurted, “I know that man!” A second later he realized how dumb that sounded.
She said gently, “Let’s go somewhere to talk, Noah. Somewhere less . . . wet.”
Water dripped from the sides of the submarine, and some had sloshed onto the floor. Sailors and officers crossed the gangway, talking quietly. Noah followed Lisa from the sub bay, down a side corridor, and into an office cluttered with charts, printouts, coffee mugs, a laptop—such an ordinary-looking place that it only heightened Noah’s sense of unreality. She sat in an upholstered chair and motioned him to another. He remained standing.
She said, “I’ve seen
this before, Noah. What you’re experiencing, I mean, although usually it isn’t as strong as you seem to be feeling it.”
“Seen what? And who are you, anyway? I want to talk to my mother!”
She studied him, and Noah had the impression she saw more than he wanted her to. She said, “I’m Dr. Lisa Guiterrez, as Ambassador Smith said. Call me Lisa. I’m a genetics counselor serving as the liaison between the ambassador and those people identified as belonging to his haplotype, L7, the one identified by your mother’s research. Before this post, I worked with Dr. Barbara Formisano at Oxford, where I also introduced people who share the same haplotype. Over and over again I’ve seen a milder version of what you seem to be experiencing now—an unexpected sense of connection between those with an unbroken line of mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to their haplogroup clan mother. It—”
“That sounds like bullshit!”
“—is important to remember that the connection is purely symbolic. Similar cell metabolisms don’t cause shared emotions. But—an important ‘but!’— symbols have a powerful effect on the human mind. Which in turn causes emotion.”
Noah said, “I had this feeling once before. About a strange woman, and I had no way of knowing if she’s my ‘haplotype’!”
Lisa’s gaze sharpened. She stood. “What woman? Where?”
“I don’t know her name. Listen, I want to talk to my mother!”
“Talk to me first. Are you a sugarcane user, Noah?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Habitual use of sugarcane heightens certain imaginative and perceptual pathways in the brain. Ambassador Smith—well, let’s set that aside for a moment. I think I know why you want to see your mother.”
Noah said, “Look, I don’t want to be ruder than I’ve already been, but this isn’t your business. Anything you want to say to me can wait until I see my mother.”
