The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  A third whorl formed in each holotank.

  It formed suddenly: one second nothing, the next brightness. But then it wavered, faded a bit. After a few moments it brightened slightly, a diffused golden haze, before again fading. On the platform Keith gasped, and I guessed he was having to shift his attention between perceiving the third source of radiation and keeping up the erotic version of the twin trance. His biofeedback techniques were less experienced than Devrie’s, and the male erection more fragile. But then he caught the rhythm, and the holograph brightened.

  It seemed to me that the room brightened as well, although no additional lights came on and the consoles glowed no brighter. Sweat poured off the researchers. Bohentin leaned forward, his neck muscle tautening toward the platform as if it were his will and not Keith/Devrie’s that strained to perceive that third presence recorded in the tank. I thought, stupidly, of mythical intermediaries: Merlyn never made king, Moses never reaching the Promised Land. Intermediaries—and then it became impossible to think of anything at all.

  Devrie shuddered and cried out. Keith’s orgasm came a moment later, and with it a final roil of neural activity so strong the two primary whorls in each holotank swelled to fill the tank and inundate the third. At the moment of breakthrough Keith screamed, and in memory it seems as if the scream was what tore through the last curtain—that is nonsense. How loud would microbes have to scream to attract the attention of giants? How loud does a knock on the door have to be to pull a sleeper from the alien world of dreams?

  The doctor beside me fell to her knees. The third presence—or some part of it—swirled all around us, racing along our own unprepared synapses and neurons, and what swirled and raced was astonishment. A golden, majestic astonishment. We had finally attracted Its attention, finally knocked with enough neural force to be just barely heard—and It was astonished that we could, or did, exist. The slow rise of that powerful astonishment within the shielded lab was like the slow swinging around of the head of a great beast to regard some butterfly it has barely glimpsed from the corner of one eye. But this was no beast. As Its attention swung toward us, pain exploded in my skull—the pain of sound too loud, lights too bright, charge too high. My brain was burning on overload. There came one more flash of insight—wordless, pattern without end—and the sound of screaming. Then, abruptly, the energy vanished.

  Bohentin, on all fours, crawled toward the holotanks. The doctor lay slumped on the floor; the other doctor had already reached the platform and its two crumpled figures. Someone was crying, someone else shouting. I rose, fell, dragged myself to the side of the platform and then could not climb it. I could not climb the platform. Hanging with two hands on the edge, hearing the voice crying as my own, I watched the doctor bend shakily to Keith, roll him off Devrie to bend over her, turn back to Keith.

  Bohentin cried, “The tapes are intact!”

  “Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God,” someone moaned, until abruptly she stopped. I grasped the flesh-colored padding on top of the platform and pulled myself up onto it.

  Devrie lay unconscious, pulse erratic, face cast in perfect bliss. The doctor breathed into Keith’s mouth—what strength could the doctor himself have left?—and pushed on the naked chest. Breathe, push, breathe, push. The whole length of Keith’s body shuddered; the doctor rocked back on his heels; Keith breathed.

  “It’s all on tape!” Bohentin cried. “It’s all on tape!”

  “God damn you to hell,” I whispered to Devrie’s blissful face. “It didn’t even know we were there!”

  Her eyes opened. I had to lean close to hear her answer.

  “But now…we know He…is there.”

  She was too weak to smile. I looked away from her, away from that face, out into the tumultuous emptiness of the lab, anywhere.

  They will try again.

  Devrie has been asleep, fed by glucose solution through an IV, for fourteen hours. I sit near her bed, frowned at by the nurse, who can see my expression as I stare at my sister. Somewhere in another bed Keith is sleeping yet again. His rest is more fitful than Devrie’s; she sinks into sleep as into warm water, but he cannot. Like me, he is afraid of drowning.

  An hour ago he came into Devrie’s room and grasped my hand. “How could It—He—It not have been aware that we existed? Not even have known?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “You felt it too, Seena, didn’t you? The others say they could, so you must have too. It…created us in some way. No, that’s wrong. How could It create us and not know?”

  I said wearily, “Do we always know what we’ve created?” and Keith glanced at me sharply. But I had not been referring to my father’s work in cloning.

  “Keith. What’s a Thysania africana?”

  “A what?”

  “Think of us,” I said, “as just one more biological side-effect. One type of being acts, and another type of being comes into existence. Man stages something like the African Horror, and in doing so he creates whole new species of moths and doesn’t even discover they exist until long afterward. If man can do it, why not God? And why should He be any more aware of it than we are?”

  Keith didn’t like that. He scowled at me, and then looked at Devrie’s sleeping face: Devrie’s sleeping bliss.

  “Because she is a fool,” I said savagely, “and so are you. You won’t leave it alone, will you? Having been noticed by It once, you’ll try to be noticed by It again. Even though she promised me otherwise, and even if it kills you both.”

  Keith looked at me a long time, seeing clearly—finally—the nature of the abyss between us, and its dimensions. But I already knew neither of us could cross. When at last he spoke, his voice held so much compassion that I hated him. “Seena. Seena, love. There’s no more doubt now, don’t you see? Now rational belief is no harder than rational doubt. Why are you so afraid to even believe?”

  I left the room. In the corridor I leaned against the wall, palms spread flat against the tile, and closed my eyes. It seemed to me that I could hear wings, pale and fragile, beating against glass.

  They will try again. For the sake of sure knowledge that the universe is not empty, Keith and Devrie and all the others like their type of being will go on pushing their human brains beyond what the human brain has evolved to do, go on fluttering their wings against that biological window. For the sake of sure knowledge: belief founded on experiment and not on faith. And the Other: being/alien/God? It, too, may choose to initiate contact, if It can and now that It knows we are here. Perhaps It will seek to know us, and even beyond the laboratory Devrie and Keith may find any moment of heightened arousal subtly invaded by a shadowy Third. Will they sense It, hovering just beyond consciousness, if they argue fiercely or race a sailboat in rough water or make love? How much arousal will it take, now, for them to sense those huge wings beating on the other side of the window?

  And windows can be broken.

  Tomorrow I will fly back to New York. To my museum, to my exhibits, to my moths under permaplex, to my empty apartment, where I will keep the heavy drapes drawn tightly across the glass.

  For—oh God—all the rest of my life.

  Afterword to “Trinity”

  This story comes from my pre-hard-SF days; the “science” in it isn’t grounded in much of anything. I hadn’t yet discovered how much fun it is to build on actual science to create fiction. Nonetheless, “Trinity” was my first Nebula nomination (I lost, to John Varley) and I was thrilled just to be nominated. A cliché, yes—but nonetheless true when you’re young and starry-eyed about the science-fiction universe. At the banquet I sat next to Algis Budrys. I met other luminaries. “Trinity” is about a search for God, but I felt I was already in heaven.

  In the decades since, my view of SF has gotten a little battered, like any well-used possession, but it has never disappeared. I love this world: the stories, the conventions, the friends, the debates about what SF “should be.” All of it. Unlike Seena, who is at home nowhere, I have been lucky.


  PEOPLE LIKE US

  Parker brought the car around at seven; George was going to meet the dinner guests at the station. Sarah said incredulously, “They’re coming up by train?”

  “Buddy Calucci broke his wrist last week and can’t drive,” George said, “and his wife has some kind of phobia about it. And the alien of course can’t drive either.”

  Of course. Of course not. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t wear pants, probably couldn’t eat anything Sarah had had Cook prepare for dinner either. All the alien could do was put her poor old George’s firm out of business with its strange advanced fuel products, whatever they were. Sarah stood before the fireplace and regarded her husband as he picked up his coat from a leather chair.

  “If it’s supposed to be such a discreet meeting that you can’t have it in the city, why are they taking the train? Why didn’t your Mr. Calucci order a car and driver?”

  “I don’t think it would occur to him.”

  “This is going to be horrible, George. It really is. I’d just as soon have Parker and Cook and Cook’s criminal brother-in-law. The one in Attica.”

  George shrugged into his coat, crossed the room, and put his hands on Sarah’s shoulders. “I know, darling, it’s too bad. But necessary. And if they come by train, they can’t stay late. The last train back is the 10:42. That’s something, at least.”

  “At least,” Sarah said. But she made herself smile at George; it wasn’t his fault, after all, and whining like this was really terribly unattractive. These…people were coming, and that was that. Just the same, with George’s florid face inches from her own, she suddenly remembered something Louise Henderson had said to her just last week at the gallery: You know, darling, George is getting awfully fat. He should go back to tennis instead of golf. If he’s not careful, he’ll start to look like that man that runs the hardware store. Sarah had laughed; Louise had a wicked eye. But Sarah had been stung, too.

  George did look a little like the man in the hardware store. The same shape to the brow, the same chin. Friends had joked about it before.

  After George left for the station, Denise brought in a tray of canapés and fresh ice. Sarah made herself a Scotch and water, drank half of it, poked at the fire, finally settled on a chair. The living room looked well by firelight, she thought. She loved this house, even if it had seemed a little empty since Emily had gone off to Rosemary Hall four years ago. Brass and mahogany gleamed in the firelight; wainscoting and molding took on subtle curves; the colors of the old Orientals glowed. In the bookcases leather bindings and Chinese vases jumbled comfortably against each other, both slightly dusty. Emily’s violin leaned against one corner. Had Emily, home for the weekend, practiced today? Probably not; too busy with the horses. Sarah smiled, finished her Scotch, and considered moving a pile of old Smithsonians and Forbes off the wing chair beside the violin. She decided against it.

  She heard the car, and they were here. Sarah rose to meet her guests. “Hello.”

  “My wife Sarah,” George said. “Darling, Mr. Calucci, Mrs. Calucci, Mr. C’Lanth.”

  “Call me Buddy,” Calucci boomed at the same moment that his wife said, “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I’m Mabel.”

  Buddy Calucci seized Sarah’s hand and pumped it. He wore a coat with hugely padded shoulders and a bright yellow tie, carefully knotted, printed with daisies. Mabel Calucci wore heart-shaped glasses and a red satin dress cut so low that Sarah blinked. She avoided altogether looking at the alien. Not just yet.

  “Nice place you got here,” Calucci boomed. “Looks real homey.” His eyes, Sarah saw, missed nothing, scrutinizing the portraits as if appraising them.

  “My, yes,” Mabel Calucci said. Her mouth pursed slightly at the magazines tossed on the wing chair.

  Sarah said, “Would you like a drink?” and started towards the sideboard. Calucci’s words stopped her.

  “No, no, Mabel and I never touch the stuff. Christian Temperance. But you folks go right ahead—feel free.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine,” Mabel said roguishly. “This must be your dog—let him right into the living room, do you?” Her eyes moved to the spot by the fireplace where Brandy usually lay; Labrador hair clung to the Oriental.

  “We got a dog, too,” Calucci said. “Doberman. Meanest guard dog you ever saw. Not that we need it now with the new security system on the country home. Del EverGuard. Seven thousand for the fencing alone.”

  “How interesting,” Sarah murmured. George threw her a warning glance. She poured herself another Scotch and water, then one for George.

  The alien said, “I’d like one, too, please.”

  Sarah turned in surprise. She had assumed that an alien wouldn’t drink alcohol. Not that she actually knew much about the aliens, really—she hadn’t kept up. The television set, a small black and white, had broken a few months ago, and with Emily only home occasional weekends, Sarah hadn’t yet gotten around to getting it repaired. She didn’t watch TV.

  “Scotch and water is fine,” the alien said. He had a deep, slightly hoarse voice. Sarah made herself look at him. Standing with his back to the fire, balancing with what looked like careless ease on both legs and the curving, muscular tail, he wasn’t quite as bad as Sarah had expected. The aliens she had seen on the now-dead TV had worn odd-looking, shiny clothes on the top halves of their bodies, nothing below. But this one wore a soft white shirt, no tie, and a tweed jacket cut long enough to cover all but his hairy legs. His head hair, too, didn’t look as strange as on the TV aliens; she supposed that a barber must have cut it. It fell thickly from a side part to just over the tops of his ears. Sarah handed him the drink.

  “Didn’t know you folks imbibed,” Calucci said to the alien. He sat on the sofa, pulling up his pant legs at the knees: preserving the crease. “Didn’t see that on TV.”

  “We just got a new set,” Mabel Calucci said. “Sony. Hundred-inch screen, remotes, stereo, everything.”

  “Have to have you all to our big Superbowl party in January,” Calucci said. “C’Lanth, your folks like football?”

  “No,” C’Lanth said. Calucci waited, but the alien said no more, sipping his drink and smiling faintly. Sarah smothered a grin.

  “Probably not your native pastime,” Calucci said. “Stands to reason. What sports do you guys like? Earth sports, I mean. When in Rome, I always say.”

  “I like tennis.”

  “Tennis?” George said, looking surprised.

  C’Lanth smiled. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ve become something of a fanatic. But I’m also afraid I have an unfair advantage—something about the joints of our thumbs. Do you play?”

  “Not as much as I used to,” George said ruefully.

  “Mrs. Atkinson?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, wondering where C’Lanth had learned such good English. But didn’t she remember something in the papers about the aliens being natural mimics as well as shrewd businessmen? And about their avidly studying just everything? “I play, but not very seriously, I’m afraid. I prefer sailing.”

  “Buddy and I bowled in a league,” Mabel Calucci said. Her plump rouged face clouded over. “In St. Pete, I mean. Before we moved to New York. Now—I don’t know.”

  “Are there bowling alleys in this cute little country town of yours, George?” Calucci asked.

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”

  There was a slight pause. Then Calucci and the alien spoke simultaneously: “Well, now, let’s get down to business!” and “I met a friend of yours, Mrs. Atkinson, at an art gallery board meeting Tuesday. Louise Henderson.”

  George said to Calucci, “Oh, I rather think later might be better, Buddy.”

  Sarah said to C’Lanth, “You were at the gallery board meeting?”

  “Not as a member, of course. Kyle Van Dorr was just showing me around. A tourist.” He smiled; Sarah would have sworn it was a self-deprecating smile.

  “When do we get down
to business then?” Calucci said. His big body shifted restlessly. When he lowered his head like that, Sarah thought, it was the exact shape of a garden trowel. “We have to act fast on this one, George, if we’re going to have any kind of alliance here. Before your pals—” he nodded at C’Lanth “—have their little rule-making meeting on mergers.”

  “We believe in competition,” C’Lanth said mildly. He finished his drink and held out the glass, mouthing Please? George made him another Scotch and water. In front of the fireplace Brandy stretched, turned in a circle, and farted. Mabel Calucci looked delicately away, mouth pursed; C’Lanth smiled. Sarah found herself smiling back. What kind of nitwit acted so affected as to be offended by a dog? Denise came to the door and announced dinner.

  Sarah ate little. She watched. C’Lanth also ate sparingly, but he tried everything. Mabel Calucci, in the presence of food, turned garrulous; each course seemed to swell her verbally, words coming out at the same rate that calories went in. She talked about her little grandson— “Cute as a button, and smart as a whip! He can already tell a Caddy from a Buick;” about the redecoration of her kitchen in apple-blossom pink; about a woman on a game show who had won $l00,000, had a heart attack, and had to sell the prizes to pay her medical bills; about the street they used to live on in St. Pete when Buddy and her were first married, where people were so friendly they didn’t even knock on each other’s doors before visiting. Not like here, where you couldn’t even see the houses from the street. Not that that was true in New York, of course, where they had their new penthouse, with the cutest terrace you ever saw, twelve stories up and just filled with fresh flowers. Buddy Calucci let his wife talk, his eyes appraising the room’s furniture, pictures, wallpaper, silver. George, good host that he always was, listened to Mabel Calucci, nodding and smiling.