The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  I didn’t listen to nothing else they said. I walked straight out of that clinic, my legs shaking, without even grabbing my coat. And there was Shawn pulling up in Jimmy Barton’s truck, getting out and looking at me with winter in his face. “Bobby’s dead,” he said. “He killed himself.”

  I said, “I know.”

  The funeral was a week later—it took that long for the coroner to get done fussing with Bobby’s body. It was election day, and Ratface Rollins lost, along with the whole Libertarian party.

  The November wind blew cold and raw. Mama was too bad off to go to the graveyard. But Shawn brought her to the service where she sat muttering, even through the church choir singing her favorite, “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” I don’t know if she even knew what was going on; for sure she didn’t recognize me. It warn’t be long afore she’d be as bad as Bobby, or in a coma like Aunt Carol Ames. Granmama recognized me, of course, but she didn’t say nothing when I came into the trailer, or when I stayed there, sleeping in my old bed with Patty and Bonnie Jean, or when I cleaned up the place a bit and cooked a stew with groceries from my clinic money. Granmama didn’t thank me, but I didn’t expect that. She was grieving Bobby. And she was Granmama.

  Dinah kept to her room, her kids pretty much in there with her day and night.

  I kept a hat on, over my part-shaved head. Not the red knit hat Dr. Chung gave me, which I wadded up and threw in the creek. In the trailer I wore Bobby’s old baseball cap, and at the funeral I wore a black straw hat that Mama had when I was little.

  “‘The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…’” Reverend Baxter did funerals old-fashioned. Bobby’s casket was lowered into the hole in the churchyard. The last of the maple leaves blew down and skittered across the grass.

  Dinah came forward, hanging onto Shawn, and tossed her flower into the grave. Then Granmama, then me, then Patty. The littlest kids, Lewis and Arianna and Timothy and Cody, were in relatives’ arms. The last to throw her flower was Bonnie Jean, and that’s when I saw it.

  Bonnie Jean wore an old coat of Patty’s, too big for her, so’s the hem brushed the ground. When she stood by the grave that hem was shaking like aspen leaves. Her face had froze, and the pupils of her eyes were so wide it looked like she was on something. She warn’t. And it warn’t just the fear and grief of a ten-year-old at a funeral, neither.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust….”

  Neighbors brought cakes and covered dishes to the trailer. Nobody didn’t stay long ’cause they knew we didn’t want them to. Dinah went back into her room with her two kids, Mama was muttering beside the stove, Shawn sat smoking and drinking Bud. I told Patty to watch Timmy and Cody and I took Bonnie Jean into our bedroom.

  “How long since you slept through the whole night?”

  She was scared enough to give me lip. “I sleep. You been right there next to me!”

  “How long, Bonnie Jean?”

  “I don’t got to tell you nothing! You’re a whore, sleeping with them Chinese and letting them do bad things to you—Bobby said!”

  “How long?”

  She looked like she was going to cry, but instead she snatched Bobby’s baseball hat off my head. It seemed to me that my optrode burned like a forest fire, though of course it didn’t. Bonnie Jean stared at it and spat, “Chink Frankenstein!”

  Probably she didn’t even know what the words meant, just heard them at school. Or at home.

  Then she started to cry, and I picked her up in my arms and sat with her on the edge of the bed, and she let me. All at once I saw that the bed was covered with the Fence Rail quilt Dinah had been making for the women’s co-op. She’d put it on my bed instead.

  I held Bonnie Jean while she cried. She told me it had been two weeks since she couldn’t sleep right and at the graveyard was her second panic attack—what she called “the scared shakes.” She was ten years old, and she carried the gene Granmama and God-knows-who-else had passed on without being affected themselves. Insomnia and panic attacks and phobias. Then hallucinations and more panic attacks and shrinking away to hardly no weight at all. Then dementia or coma or Bobby’s way out. Ten years old. While I was nineteen and I hadn’t even felt her restless beside me in the long cold night.

  I knowed, then, what I had to do.

  The Chinese clinic was almost empty.

  A sign outside said closed. Through the window I could see the lobby stripped of its chairs and pictures and clothes basket of toys. But a light shone in a back room, bright in the drizzly gray rain. I rattled the lock on the door and shouted “Hey!” and pretty soon Mrs. Cully opened it.

  She wore jeans and a sweatshirt instead of her usual dress, and her hair was wrapped in a big scarf. In one hand was a roll of packing tape. She didn’t look surprised to see me. She looked something, but I couldn’t read it.

  “Ludie. Come in.”

  “You all leaving Blaine?”

  “Our grant won’t be renewed. Dr. Chung found out the day after the election from a man he knows in Washington.”

  “But Rollins lost!”

  “Yes, but the new president made campaign promises to reinstate the FDA with tight regulations on studies with human subjects. Under Rollins there was too much abuse. So Doctors Chung and Liu are using their remaining money for data analysis, back at the university—especially since we have no research subjects here. I’m packing files and equipment.”

  The rooms behind her, all their doors open, were full of boxes, some sealed, some still open. A feeling washed over me that matched the weather outside. The clinic never had no chance no matter who won the election.

  Mrs. Cully said, “But Dr. Chung left something for you, in case you came back.” She plucked a brown envelope off the counter, and then she went back to her packing while I opened it. Tact—Mrs. Cully always had tact.

  Inside the envelope was a cell phone, a pack of money with a rubber band around it, and a letter.

  Ludie—

  This is the rest of what the clinic owes you. Along with it, accept my deepest gratitude for your help with this study. Even though not finished, it—and you—have made a genuine contribution to science. You are an exceptional young woman, with exceptional intelligence and courage.

  This cell phone holds the phone number for Dr. Morton, who implanted your optrode, and who will remove it. Call her to schedule the operation. There will of course be no charge. The phone also holds my number. Please call me. If you don’t, I will call this number every day at 11:00 a.m. until I reach you. I want only to know that you are all right.

  Your friend,

  Hai Chung

  The phone said it was 9:30 a.m. Mrs. Cully said, “Is that your suitcase?”

  “Yeah. It is. I need Dr. Chung’s address, ma’am.”

  She looked at me hard. “Call him first.”

  “Okay.” But I wouldn’t. By the time the phone rang, I would be on the 10:17 Greyhound to Lexington.

  She gave me his university address but wouldn’t give out his home. It didn’t really matter. I knew he would give it to me, plus whatever else I needed. And not just for the study, neither.

  Dr. Chung told me, one time, about a scientist called Daniel Zagury He was studying on AIDS, and he shot himself up with a vaccine he was trying to make, to test it. Dr. Chung didn’t do no experiments on himself; he used me instead, just like I was using him for the money. Only that warn’t the whole story, no more than Bobby’s terrible behavior when he got really sick was the whole story of Bobby. The Chinese clinic warn’t Chinese, and I’m not no Frankenstein. I’m not all that “courageous,” neither, though I sure liked Dr. Chung saying it. What I am is connected to my kin, no matter how much I used to wish I warn’t. Right now, connected don’t mean staying in Blaine to help Dinah with her grief and Shawn with his sickness and the kids with their schooling. It don’t mean waiting for Mama’s funeral, or living with Granmama’s sour anger at what her genes did to her family. Right now, being co
nnected means getting on a Greyhound to Lexington.

  It means going on with Dr. Chung’s study.

  It means convincing him, and everybody else, to put a optrode in Bonnie Jean’s head, and Shawn’s, and maybe even Lewis’s, so laser light can “disrupt their neural pathways” and they don’t get no more misfolded prions than they already got.

  It means paying for this with whatever work I get.

  And maybe it even means going to Washington, D.C. and talking to my congressman—whoever he is—about why this study is a good thing. I read on Dr. Chung’s tablet that other scientists sometimes do that. Maybe I could take Bonnie Jean with me. She’s real pretty, and I can teach her to look pathetic. Maybe.

  I never had no thoughts like this afore, and maybe that’s the opsins, too. But maybe not. I don’t know. I only know that this is my path and I’m going to walk it.

  I hike to the highway, suitcase in one hand and cell phone in the other, and I flag down the bus.

  Afterword to “Pathways”

  In 2013 Stephen Cass, editor of MIT Tech Review, contacted me about writing a hard-SF, near-future story for the Review. I jumped at the chance. Untrained in any of the sciences, I am nonetheless a science groupie who haloes physics and biology and chemistry in a golden glow. Stephen gave me a possible list of breakthrough fields to choose from. Optogenetics intrigued me the most, at least in part because its consequences seemed the most scary.

  Since this story was written, research in optogenetics has gotten even scarier. MIT researchers have succeeded in altering the ways that mice remember bad or good experiences. The memory itself is not altered, but the emotions around it can be changed so that bad memories evoke less stress in mice, and good ones less pleasure—all through directing pulses of light into genemod neurons. This could have positive outcomes for treatment of psychological disorders. It could also lead to exactly what Ludmilla fears.

  As always, science is a tool, and we decide what to do with it.

  DANCING ON AIR

  “When a man has been guilty of a mistake, either in ordering his own affairs, or in directing those of State, or in commanding an army, do we not always say, So-and-so has made a false step in this affair? And can making a false step derive from anything but lack of skill in dancing?”

  — Molière

  1.

  Sometimes I understand the words. Sometimes I do not understand the words.

  Eric brings me to the exercise yard. A man and a woman stand there. The man is tall. The woman is short. She has long black fur on her head. She smells angry.

  Eric says, “This is Angel. Angel, this is John Cole and Caroline Olson.”

  “Hello,” I say.

  “I’m supposed to understand that growl?” the woman says. “Might as well be Russian!”

  “Caroline,” the man says, “you promised…”

  “I know what I promised.” She walks away. She smells very angry. I don’t understand. My word was hello. Hello is one of the easy words.

  The man says, “Hello, Angel.” He smiles. I sniff his shoes and bark. He smells friendly. I smell two cats and a hot dog and street tar and a car. I feel happy. I like cars.

  The woman comes back. “If we have to do this, then let’s just do it, for Chrissake. Let’s sign the papers and get out of this hole.”

  John Cole says, “The lawyers are all waiting in Eric’s office.”

  Eric’s office smells of many people. I go to my place beside the door. I lie down. Maybe later somebody takes me in the car.

  A woman looks at many papers and talks. “A contract between Biomod Canine Protection Agency, herein referred to as the party of the first part, and the New York City Ballet, herein referred to as the party of the second part, in fulfillment of the requirements of Columbia Insurance Company, herein referred to as the party of the third part, as those requirements are set forth in Policy 438-69, Section 17, respecting prima ballerina Caroline Olson. The party of the first part shall furnish genetically-modified canine protection to Caroline Olson under, and not limited to, the following conditions…”

  The words are hard.

  I think words I can understand.

  My name is Angel. I am a dog. I protect. Eric tells me to protect. No people can touch the one I protect except safe people. I love people I protect. I sleep now.

  “Angel,” Eric says from his chair, “Wake up now. You must protect.”

  I wake up. Eric walks to me. He sits next to me. He puts his voice in my ear.

  “This is Caroline. You must protect Caroline. No one must hurt Caroline. No one must touch Caroline except safe people. Angel—protect Caroline.”

  I smell Caroline. I am very happy. I protect Caroline.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Caroline says. She walks away.

  I love Caroline.

  We go in the car. We go very far. Many people. Many smells. John drives the car. John is safe. He may touch Caroline. John stops the car. We get out. There are many tall buildings and many cars.

  “You sure you’re going to be okay?” John Cole says.

  “You’ve protected your investment, haven’t you?” Caroline snarls. John drives away.

  A man stands by the door. The man says, “Evening, Miss Olson.”

  “Evening, Sam. This is my new guard dog. The company insists I have one, after…what’s been happening. They say the insurance company is paranoid. Yeah, sure. I need a dog like I need a knee injury.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Doberman, isn’t he? He looks like a goooood ol’ dog. Hey, big fella, what’s your name?”

  “Angel,” I say.

  The man jumps and makes a noise. Caroline laughs.

  “Bioenhanced. Great for my privacy, right? Rover, Sam is safe. Do you hear me? Sam is safe.”

  I say, “My name is Angel.”

  Caroline says, “Sam, you can relax. Really. He only attacks on command, or if I scream, or if he hasn’t been told a person is safe and that person touches me.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Sam smells afraid. He looks at me hard. I bark and my tail moves.

  Caroline says, “Come on, Fido. Your spy career is about to begin.”

  I say, “My name is Angel.”

  “Right,” Caroline says.

  We go in the building. We go in the elevator. I say, “Sam has a cat. I smell Sam’s cat.”

  “Who the fuck cares,” Caroline says.

  I am a dog.

  I must love Caroline.

  2.

  Two days after the second ballerina was murdered, Michael Chow, senior editor of New York Now and my boss, called me into his office. I already knew what he wanted, and I already knew I didn’t want to do it. He knew that, too. We both knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “You’re the logical reporter, Susan,” Michael said. He sat behind his desk, always a bad sign. When he thought I’d want an assignment, he leaned casually against the front of the desk. Its top was cluttered with print-outs; with disposable research cartridges, some with their screens alight; with pictures of Michael’s six children. Six. They all looked like Michael: straight black hair and a smooth face like a peeled egg. At the apex of the mess sat a hardcopy of the Times 3:00 p.m. on-line lead: autopsy discovers bioenhancers in city ballet dancer. “You have an in. Even Anton Privitera will talk to you.”

  “Not about this. He already gave his press conference. Such as it was.”

  “So? You can get to him as a parent and leverage from there.”

  My daughter Deborah was a student in the School of American Ballet, the juvenile province of Anton Privitera’s kingdom. For thirty years he had ruled the New York City Ballet like an anointed tyrant. Sometimes it seemed he could even levy taxes and raise armies, so exalted was his reputation in the dance world, and so good was his business manager John Cole at raising funds and enlisting corporate patrons. Dancers had flocked to the City Ballet from Europe, from Asia, from South America, from the serious ballet schools in the patrolled zones of America’s dying cities.
Until biohancers, the New York City Ballet had been the undisputed grail of the international dance world.

  Now, of course, that was changing.

  Privitera was dynamic with the press as long as we were content with what he wished us to know. He wasn’t going to want to discuss the murder of two dancers, one of them his own.

  A month ago Nicole Heyer, a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, had been found strangled in Central Park. Three days ago the body of Jennifer Lang had been found in her modest apartment. Heyer had been a bioenhanced dancer who had come to the ABT from the Stuttgart Ballet. Lang, a minor soloist with the City Ballet, had of course been natural. Or so everybody thought until the autopsy. The entire company had been bioscanned only three weeks ago, Artistic Director Privitera had told the press, but apparently these particular viro-enhancers were so new and so different that they hadn’t even shown up on the scan.

  I wondered how to make Michael understand the depth of my dislike for all this.

  “Don’t cover the usual police stuff,” Michael said, “nor the scientific stuff on bioenhancement. Concentrate on the human angle you do so well. What’s the effect of these murders on the other dancers? Has it affected their dancing? Does Privitera seemed more confirmed in his company policy now, or has this shaken him enough to consider a change? What’s he doing to protect his dancers? How do the parents feel about the youngsters in the ballet school? Are they withdrawing them until the killer is caught?”

  I said, “You don’t have any sensitivity at all, do you, Michael?”

  He said quietly, “Your girl’s seventeen, Susan. If you couldn’t get her to leave dancing before, you’re not going to get her to leave now. Will you do the story?”

  I looked again at the scattered pictures of Michael’s children. His oldest was at Harvard Law. His second son was a happily married househusband, raising three kids. His third child, a daughter, was doing six-to-ten in Rock Mountain Maximum Security State Prison for armed robbery. There was no figuring it out. I said, “I’ll do the story.”