Sea Change

by Nancy Kress

  Sometimes not even superb and relentless training can keep shock from showing on your face, if only for a moment. The recruit registered it, for which I would have given him points if I hadn’t, for the second time in two hours, felt so shaken.

  He looked like Ian. An Ian who’d been allowed to grow up, who hadn’t died during the Catastrophe. Same dark hair curling over his ears, same full lips and gray eyes flecked with gold. After that first shock, the differences became clearer: This kid, at twenty-three, was of course heavier and more muscular than Ian had been at twelve. The recruit’s ears stuck out more. But he was a good-looking young man, and I felt a flash of utterly insane pride that my son might have grown up to look like this, might have been the benefit to the world that this recruit, whom I would know as “Tom Fairwood,” might be.

  Genes, even coincidental genes, are funny things. And it was coincidental; recruitment had checked out every single thing about Tom Fair-wood, right down to his third grade report card and what he ate for breakfast, and he was in no way related to me. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

  I said, “Gorgeous view, isn’t it?”

  “I always find looking at this so calming.”

  We went through the rest of the inane identification protocol, and then I made my decision. “Change of plans, Tom. You’re coming with me.”

  “Has something happened that—”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Come on.”

  He strode along beside me, not asking further questions, just obeying. A good sign. We walked to the car like two people, possibly mother and son, out to enjoy the weather, occasionally exchanging a trivial remark.

  In my car Tom said, “Are we going to a station?”

  “No. You’re going to meet our cell leader.”

  He nodded and said nothing more until we pulled up to Kyle Washington’s house in the Seattle suburb of Burien.

  It was not my job to train Tom. The recruiter, whom I of course didn’t know, would have done that. Tom would already know everything important: why we were organized the way we were, the security measures we had to take, the reporting rules, the kinds of tasks he would perform. My job was to assign him those tasks. I was the third-in-command in our cell of the Org, a grandiose position for a group of four people—now, five. Only Kyle, our cell leader, knew where other cells were. If Kyle was hit by a bus, his second, “Jonas,” would report to one of the scientists at one of the four stations our cell covered and receive further instructions from him or her.

  The Org had to be set up that way. When its predecessor group hadn’t been, soon after the Catastrophe, the result was that the entire original group had been discovered and prosecuted under RICO statutes. Some members had flipped; dozens had gone to jail; two people had committed suicide; and Dr. Eric Kitson, founder, had died in a hail of FBI bullets when he walked, unarmed but without his hands raised, out of a station. No FBI agents were ever prosecuted for that murder.

  For our carefully rebuilt resistance movement, secrecy and planning were key. A relatively small number of people can effect huge change if they’re well organized. In 1917, just 23,000 Communist Party members eventually seized control of a government controlling 180 million peasants. A tiny handful of terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers.

  In the Org (the only name it had), recruitment was rigorous. No communications were digital. Everything was on a need-to-know basis, and hardly anyone knew anyone else. Certainly I didn’t. I didn’t even know how big the Org was in total, although I suspected it had grown pretty large since Kyle had once let slip a reference to “regional headquarters.” Which, of course, implied a nonregional headquarters somewhere. That was a small nugget of knowledge I was not supposed to have.

  Kyle, on the other hand, did not know about the much larger nugget I possessed. And I was not going to tell him.

  Kyle Tyrone Washington lived under his own name. A six-foot-two African American ex-NFL wide receiver is too noticeable to assume an alias. His wife, Susan, was in the front yard doing whatever you do to flower beds in October. It involved a rake, bags of organic-looking stuff, and a wide straw hat. Susan wasn’t one of us, and she didn’t know what Kyle did when he wasn’t at his legitimate job, which was counseling troubled teens and their even more troubled parents in an office adjoining their small brick home.

  “Caro,” she said, stripping off gardening gloves. “How nice to see you.”

  “You, too. Susan, this is Tom. Kyle probably told you about him.”

  “Oh, yes, another chess protege. But I didn’t realize you had a match this afternoon.”

  “Kyle doesn’t. Tom and I do. Susan Washington, Tom Fairwood. I picked up Tom and since we pass you on our way into the city, I thought I’d introduce him to Kyle, if Kyle’s between clients. If not, it can wait.”

  “I’ll see.” Susan smiled pleasantly at Tom and started for the office. Susan was kind, incurious, and a little dim. I was always surprised that a man like Kyle chose a woman like her, but there’s no predicting what strangely assorted couples will marry. Just look at Jake and me.

  Kyle and Susan emerged from his office. Susan said, “Can you stay for coffee?”

  “Thank you, but we have a scheduled match. Kyle, Tom wants to ask you about Fischer’s use of the X-ray attack in the 1963 championship match against Bisguier.”

  Susan laughed. “I’ll leave you chess people to it.”

  When she was out of earshot, Kyle asked, “What’s happened?”

  I told him, leaving out the toothbrush in my pocket. “Kyle, do you know anything about that lost house that I should also know?”

  “No. I’ll find out what I can before the meeting tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, since he’s here, you might as well take Tom to the station with you. Introduce him there.”

  “All right.” I didn’t ask if, or why, Tom could take an overnight trip on such short notice; if he had domestic complications, Kyle wouldn’t have told me to take him. “And I need another D. I had to swallow mine at the wandering house.”

  “You go through a lot of these, Caro. They don’t grow on trees, you know. Not yet.”

  “Ha ha,” I said.

  Kyle gave his usual wintry smile. His face wore a permanently pained expression, even though he wasn’t a pessimistic person. A passionate idealist, he thought the Org could succeed in its mission. I tried to share his belief, because I so desperately wanted to. Sometimes, I even succeeded.

  Kyle brought me another D from a safe somewhere deep in the house. Back in my car, Tom said, “Do you know a lot about chess?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said. “I’ve memorized some sentences to drive Susan away. You’ll need to do the same. I’ll give you a—”

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “I held a 2100 ranking in college.”

  I nodded and concentrated on driving to I-90, eyes on the road, expression blank. Ian, too, had played chess. After ten years, memory was no longer a tsunami swamping everything else in my mind, but the slow, dark tides it brought were sometimes worse. And thinking of Ian meant, inevitably, thinking of Jake, who would never see this kid beside me who looked so much like our lost son. Although, considering everything that had happened both between us and around us, maybe that was a good thing.

  But still, Jake’s loss. And mine. One of so many, starting from practically the day we met.

  2005: NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

  “I’M NOT GOING,” I said to Dena.

  My roommate turned in our dorm room at Yale and glared at me. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s trivial.”

  “Theater isn’t trivial! Come on, Renata, lighten up. Oh, wait—you don’t know how to lighten up.”

  I turned away, marveling for the hundredth time at the stupidity of campus housing, which had put me in a room with Dena only because her preferred roommate had abruptly left school to get married (also stupid—who gets married at twenty-one?), and I had been too busy with things that actually mattered to turn in my h
ousing forms. Dena, from somewhere in Kentucky, was smart, funny, and completely without boundaries. She took my clothes, cursed in class, smoked (nobody at Yale smoked), and resisted assimilation into the Ivy League with every inch of her perpetually overexposed body. She also maintained an A-minus GPA. And when she wanted something, she had the tenacity of a wood tick.

  “Dena, I’m not going to the play with you. I like theater, yes, but only good theater. Not stupid farce, which this play is.”

  “It’s Molière. You’d go with me if the drama department were doing it in French. Then it would be sophisticated enough for you, even if you only understood every fifth word.”

  She could display an annoying penetration that never failed to disconcert me, especially since it usually held a barb.

  I said, “But it’s not in French, is it? And I have to study.” I had arrived two weeks late on campus, with the dean’s permission, and was way behind.

  Dena changed tactics. She laid her hand on my arm. “Renata, please please please. You’re my only friend on campus—” not true, but close “—and I don’t want to go alone.”

  “It’s that guy, isn’t it? That blond actor you’re trying to hook up with. You’re still chasing him.”

  “I’m not chasing him. I’m trying to get him to chase me, and it’s too obvious if I go backstage alone. Anyway, he has a nice friend, and you and the friend are both from Portland. There’s a bond right there.”

  “I’m from Seattle.”

  “Same thing.”

  “I’s not even the same state.”

  “Whatever. Also, you’re both here on scholarship.”

  “Dena—”

  “Okay, forget the friend. I never even met him anyway. Look, if you just do this one teeny tiny thing for me, I’ll write that paper you owe in Contemporary Brit Lit.”

  The paper was due in three days, I was drowning in work, and I couldn’t remember why I had chosen Contemporary Brit Lit as my last senior-year elective. Dena was an English major.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll go. But just to watch the play and make one quick trip backstage. I’m not going drinking with you guys, if you even get that far.”

  “I will. And thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “Don’t gush and simper, Dena, it doesn’t work on me. And give me back that shirt!”

  “I wasn’t going to wear it anyway,” she said scornfully. “Not to this.” She took off my button-down and put on a clingy, low-cut tee with her jeans.

  My jeans. But I let it go. I needed that Brit Lit paper.

  After Tartuffe, which was just as silly as I remembered, we made our way backstage. The blond actor playing Orgon was immediately accosted by Dena. I was plotting escape when Tartuffe came up to me, still in costume and makeup.

  “Hi, I’m Jake Sanderson. Renata, right? I think we’re going out with Alan and Dena.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, inwardly furious at Dena’s duplicity. Then, to make up for my rudeness, I added, “You were good in the play.” It was true: his Tartuffe had an oily slyness that never slipped into overexaggeration. He’d dominated even those scenes where he stood in the background. Not classically handsome, he had presence, plus the priceless asset of a truly compelling voice, like that old-time actor Richard Burton. But American instead of British.

  “I was more than good,” he said, “I was spectacular. And eventually I’m going to be even better.”

  “All that and modesty, too,” I said, turned off but also surprised. Yale, God knew, had its share of outsized egos, but usually there were token attempts to keep them hidden.

  “Fact trumps modesty,” he said. “Look, Renata, come out with us. Dena told me what you’ve been doing for the last month. I’m intrigued.”

  Bile rose in my throat. “Intrigued? You’re intrigued by the 2,000 deaths and thousands of homeless and sheer misery caused by Hurricane Katrina? You’re not appalled by the way the government mishandled the crisis? You’re not outraged or, at a minimum, compassionate for the victims?”

  “All of that. None of which means I can’t also be intrigued that a Yale senior would arrive so late on campus because she was in Louisiana with Second Harvest, feeding displaced persons. I thought Dena told me you had a logical mind.”

  “And I thought you were good as Tartuffe but no Hal Holbrook.”

  “So you saw the old TV movie! Your artistic purity isn’t quite as pure as you pretend. And actually, you did think I was as good as Holbrook. Do you think I can’t tell? And just because you’re a junior activist and I’m a not-yet-famous actor doesn’t mean you can’t have a drink with me.”

  “But why would you want to?” I wasn’t flirting; I never flirted. I genuinely wanted to know. Most guys were put off by me. You come on too strong, Dena once told me. There’s a fine line between confidence and abrasiveness. I’d replied that I don’t toe lines.

  Jake said, “Damned if I know why I want to have a drink with you. Let’s find out.”

  Let’s find out. That became the mantra for our lives. The chief things we found out were about each other. All senior year we dated, fucked, and fought. It got to the point that I couldn’t tell the three things apart. We fought on dates; we fucked while fighting; we dated at events that were the subjects of our fights. I coordinated demonstrations for disability rights and against the Middle East wars. And Jake, who was supposed to attend a big demonstration with me, missed it because the drama department held an emergency rehearsal of a Shaw play after Saint Joan came down with flu two days before opening night. I missed the opening night of Bus Stop, in which Jake played Bo, because I was marching in Florida for immigrant rights. We had angry sex, we had make-up sex, we had tender sex, we had sex so full of laughter that we nearly rolled off the bed in Jake’s ratty apartment.

  In May we graduated, me with a degree in Poli Sci and Jake in theater. Both of our families came east for graduation. The one dinner we all had together was not a success. Jake’s mother, a widow, wore a fussy polyester dress and asked the Lord to help us to victory in Iraq. My parents, old and unrepentant hippies, wore jeans and handmade wooden jewelry and talked about the fight to legalize marijuana. Dylan, Jake’s teenage brother, made rude remarks and sneered at everything. After dinner, to erase the strain, Jake and I went back to his room and had more sex.

  Two days later, Jake left for New York to try his luck as an actor. I went to D.C. to work for the Environmental Protection Agency as a one-year intern, where I did nothing of significance. We commuted, argued, broke up, got back together.

  In 2007, Jake got the role of Valentine in a regional production of Arcadia and went to Dallas. I got fed up with photocopying and answering phones. I quit the EPA, which didn’t seem to me to be protecting much of anything, and went to work for Planned Parenthood. I also arranged demonstrations for the Matthew Shepard Act, against the air strikes in Somalia, and for animal rights.

  In April, Jake and I broke up. “You don’t even know why you’re an activist!” he flung at me in the heat of battle. “Your ‘causes’ are all over the map. You like the fight more than the cause—any cause—because it makes you feel important and alive!”

  “You don’t understand the first thing about me!” I screamed back. “And you never will!”

  In 2008, the economy collapsed. I went to work for the Obama campaign in Chicago. Jake got a small part off-Broadway and was mentioned glowingly in nearly every review of the play. After the presidential election, I moved to New York, got rehired by Planned Parenthood, and narrowly avoided arrest during a counterprotest at an abortion clinic. We started seeing each other again. The sex was still spectacular.

  That year, Jake and I broke up twice, the second time on New Year’s Eve. I was planning a January contraception push for high school girls. He was supposed to leave for a screen test in Hollywood. I refused to go with him. “If you have to make movies, at least go to Europe where they make decent art films! Don’t waste any more of your life than you already have
!”

  Afterward, I regretted saying that. Even my twenty-five-year-old self knew that I was a prig. But it was too late. Jake stalked out of the party just as people began singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and we were over.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I drank vodka, my numbing solution of choice, until a watery sun rose over Manhattan. Missing Jake this time wasn’t like missing him other times. Somewhere in the deepest caves of my mind, I’d known that our other break-ups weren’t permanent. I’d known it the way you know that your broken elbow will heal, your sprained wrist will eventually lift things again. But then your whole arm is amputated, both wrist and elbow gone for good, and you must learn to live without them.

  I did all the things you do when you hope someone will contact you. I checked my texts every five minutes. I set my computer volume on loud so that anywhere in the apartment, I would hear notification of an email from Jake Sander-son. I followed his Facebook page compulsively, which was how I knew he was getting small movie parts and dating an unimportant Hollywood actress with blond hair to her waist.

  But I didn’t call him. He was in the wrong; he should have been the one to call me.

  The incredible, self-spiting arrogance of the young.

  2032: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  THE ORG STATION headed by Dr. Louis Weinberg was in Eastern Washington, over the Cascade Mountains that split the state into two regions so different from each other that they might as well be separate countries. Seattle was wet, liberal, full of sharp contrasts: tech rich who owned drivies. Two- or four-person quadcopter taxis. Delivery drones for anything that you didn’t mind being hacked. Armed home-protection bots. Most of all, food security. The shrinking middle class, who owned the independent services catering to the tech rich, also could afford enough nutritious food. Everybody else, made jobless and sometimes homeless by automation, survived on cheap, starchy food donated by agribusinesses, who were reimbursed by governments state and federal. It was nice for the agribusinesses. It also prevented outright revolution. So far.