Sea Change

by Nancy Kress

  At night, I drank at my unwashed kitchen table, with an index card propped up against the bottle in front of me. On the index card, I’d drawn a diagram copied from the internet:

  Domoic acid.

  I drank more, and barely left my apartment until, one night, my doorbell rang over and over. When I could no longer stand the clanging in my head, I flung open the door, ready to scream at whoever stood there.

  It was a small, old woman, a young and muscular man hovering protectively behind. “I’m Naomi Patterson,” she said in the voice I remembered from that terrible phone call. “You have to stop now.”

  “Stop walking the beach because it’s on tribal land? I won’t stop. No.” I was ready to fight—her, him, the world.

  “You can walk on the beach if you choose to. But you have to stop destroying yourself.”

  The sheer effrontery of this fueled my rage. “Who are you to—”

  “It’s who you are that matters. I need you.”

  “You . . . need me? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I saw you in court with the other lawyer for my niece, Elizabeth Brown.”

  I remembered Elizabeth Brown. She had been assaulted by a non-Native, and Jeremy had worked with the state prosecutor trying the attacker. Jeremy had, in fact, done nearly all the work except the actual litigation; Elizabeth Brown had not been a priority for the overworked D.A. I’d helped prepare Elizabeth, traumatized, to testify. She’d had family with her, silent and suspicious. Maybe one of them had been Naomi. Tribal members don’t like accepting our help, even when they can benefit from it. But there are not enough Native lawyers to go around.

  She said, “Another Quinault woman has been accused of a crime she didn’t commit. I need you and your lawyer.” She said it as if I were Jeremy’s boss, not the other way around. “Your son and my great-grandson were friends. Your son died with us. You must help us.”

  I didn’t follow her logic, and I don’t think the man beside her did, either. He continued to stare at me impassively, a stocky young man dressed in jeans and a plain tee, with his black hair in a man bun. I didn’t know until later that he was another of Naomi’s grandchildren, and that he and she were two of the three people who would lift me out of the abyss and back to life.

  The third person, an even more improbable savior, was Dylan Sanderson.

  2022: SEATTLE

  THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS following the Catastrophe caused the greatest turnover of power in American history. Lawmakers who had supported GMOs, or had ties with agribusiness, or were suspected of somehow being complicit in something lost their seats at both federal and state levels. Not all of them, of course, but enough to change everything.

  Until the Catastrophe, the battle versus GMO crops had been a battle against uncertainty: what might they do to health, environment, biodiversity? After the Catastrophe, uncertainty was gone, at least in the minds of 65 percent of the public, as determined by multiple polls. Expensive and vigorous PR campaigns did not change many minds. Genetic engineering was Satan. It had brought Armageddon. This was a holy war.

  All GM crops were banned from farms in the United States. The EU, which had banned growing and importing GMOs twenty-five years earlier, was smug. Also hungry, as U.S. imports disappeared. America was having trouble feeding itself, let alone anybody else.

  Prices of organic crops soared. So did organic planting; it was spring. The remaining agribusinesses scrambled to convert to non-GMOs. That didn’t change the huge amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides sprayed on crops, but nobody was looking at that. During a holy war, you concentrate only on the infidels.

  The Department of Agricultural Security, DAS, was created to enforce the ban on GMOs.

  None of this was simple. Gene flow always happened between wild and cultivated crops as pollen was borne on the wind. Before the Catastrophe, genes from GMO canola had turned up in wild mustard plants, that tough and pesky roadside weed. Now those genes blew back onto non-GMO canola plants, “contaminating” them. It’s hard to put genies back into bottles.

  And a lot of people didn’t want to.

  I talked Jeremy into taking Naomi’s greatniece’s cousin’s case, even though it was not the sort of case he usually handled and the young woman, contrary to Naomi’s belief, was guilty of the burglary she was accused of. However, the police had performed so many illegal and racist actions in arresting, searching, and interrogating her that Jeremy had no trouble getting the case dismissed. More cases came to us from the Quinault Nation; evidently Naomi wielded considerable power there. Jeremy made clear that his pro bono work concerned only those situations involving sexual assault. The victims always asked for me. The work did not fill the void—nothing would ever do that—but it filled my days.

  Even after my Ian was gone, Dylan would drive from Portland every few months or so to have dinner with me. He missed Ian, too. Although Dylan was far too self-absorbed to fill the father role that Jake had taken on only between movies, Dylan had liked to play video games with Ian and to take him fishing. Dylan was thirty now. He’d been briefly married and acrimoniously divorced, no kids. He still fidgeted.

  In January 2024, as we drank coffee in my apartment, he said abruptly, “Jake was offered a part in an anti-GMO movie.”

  “He was?” I couldn’t picture such a film, and then, sickeningly, I could. Evil scientists out to destroy the world, heroic DAS agents, somewhere a scantily clad female informant. Give me a break.

  “Jake turned it down.”

  “Good for him.”

  “He is in favor of GMOs.”

  Unless Jake had become an entirely different person, I already knew that. Dylan watched me intently—why? Finally he said, “I am, too.”

  “So am I.”

  “I know. You always were.” He drained his coffee, set down the cup and fiddled with the handle, looked straight at me. “Look, Renata, I’m worried about you. You and Jake were the only family I have. You need . . . something. I don’t know what. But I know about this group, they’re trying to work on GMOs again, this time the way they should have been done in the first place. I wish I could join them, but I can’t, and I thought—”

  “Of course you can’t,” I said as startled by that idea as by the notion that I was still family to Dylan. “You’re law enforcement. Your job is to arrest those people.”

  He got the mulish look I remembered from his teenage years. “Yeah, well, law enforcement isn’t everything that outsiders think it is. There’s a lot of stuff about it that I don’t like. And that’s federal, anyway, not state. But I know I can’t join this group, not even to stick it to my captain, and if you’re not interested, forget about it. It was just an idea because I’m worried about you. Well, I know about this other group, completely out in the open, that’s working on all the homelessness from automation, you could—”

  “No,” I said, because there were always groups working to slow down automation, and none of them ever got anywhere. “Tell me about the pro-GMO group.” Ian, saying that Sage was wrong. “Those people—they can’t grow enough food. I can sell a lot of my stuff.”

  “You can’t ever tell this group that you heard about it from me. I’d get in a lot of trouble.”

  “I won’t. I won’t involve you at all. Just tell me how to make contact.”

  Joining the Org wasn’t easy. The group was grass-roots, beginning slowly at first and then building fast with a surprising amount of hidden, illegal support from rich donors. Its goal was to rebuild the genetic engineering of crops so that, instead of enriching big agribusinesses, they could save children from hunger and malnutrition. I hung on to Ian’s words as an anchor to sanity.

  There were probably other groups doing the same thing, but I didn’t hear about them—then or ever—because secrecy was so essential. I passed through three layers of recruiters in three different cities, none of whom I ever saw again. DAS was not yet operational, so at least they knew I wasn’t a government infiltrator. My b
ackground was thoroughly checked, my motives examined. “We don’t take people just because they’re mad at the world. Or even at a section of the world. How mad are you, Renata, and at whom?”

  I told the recruiters about Ian. I told them about Jake, which nearly disqualified me; the spouse of a world-famous movie star might be too visible. Careful research convinced them I was no longer part of Jake’s life.

  I prepared for my recruitment interviews as thoroughly as I prepared briefs for Jeremy, and I told them nothing but truth: I believed the promise of biotech had been hijacked by corporations who’d bought up patents, processes, and whole companies to focus on profit, not people in need. I knew how much the global demand for food would rise in coming decades, and how much more woodland and rain forest would have to be cleared to meet it, further accelerating climate change. And I asked the important question: how can you be sure the genemod crops you create won’t replicate the Klenbar disaster? They had the right answers, including information on new gene-editing techniques that didn’t involve using bacteria or viruses as intermediaries to change DNA.

  They were, the recruiters said in nonspecific terms, working to develop varied crops that would grow in acidic soils; 43 percent of tropical soils are acidic. That would grow in drought conditions; creeping desertification was projected for the next forty years. That would be more resistant to pests and diseases without such heavy use of sprayed chemicals. That would increase yields or nutritional benefits.

  They took me. Between my work for the Org and my work with the Quinault Nation, my life once again acquired focus and meaning. The aching hollow where Ian had been would never fill, and my nights were still bad. It might have helped if I had been able to cry, but I never could. Some nights it felt like the pent-up tears would crush me with the weight of unshed water. But I was at least functional.

  And then, on the beach where Ian died, I met Joe Peck again.

  It had been months since I’d been back to the beach. But all at once, after a meeting in Taholah, I wanted to see the Pacific when the Blob wasn’t sitting offshore and the water was blue and glistening. There wasn’t much actual beach to see; the tide was in and loose logs were drifting almost to the bluff. A man stooped at the water’s edge, filling vials.

  Anyone who filled vials with sea water was either a techie or a lunatic. No one else was around, but I had my gun in my pocket, and I ignored the man. He straightened as I passed and gave me a look I knew well from Taholah: absolutely opaque courtesy. I was there, he acknowledged I as there, interaction between us was not going to happen.

  The beach was dotted with the tiny dimples that indicated razor clams below the surface of the sand. I stared at them, unable to look away. A sudden large wave jumped from the sea and soaked my shoes and pants.

  “Fuck!” I said. The North Pacific is stingingly cold. I bent to take off my water-filled shoes.

  All at once the man said, “I know you.”

  “I don’t think so.” I straightened quickly and faced him, my hand on the Beretta in my jacket pocket. But he made no move toward me. Instead he stared at my wrist. The sleeve of my jacket had ridden up when I bent over, exposing the bracelet of ugly, Tiffany Teal plastic. I’d forgotten to take it off since the morning’s Org meeting. My neck prickled—did he know something? Was he DAS or some other federal agency?

  “You’re Renata Black,” he said. “You worked with the attorney who defended my cousin in U.S. court. Elizabeth Brown.”

  The case that Naomi had insisted I take, showing up at my door with . . . yes, this man. I recognized him now.

  He said, “I’m Joe Peck.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Bye.” I didn’t want to talk to him, to know him. He’d seen my bracelet and stared at it like he knew what it meant. He knew my real name. He could connect my two lives. Not good.

  But he said, “I’m with NOAA. We track P-nitzschia.”

  “I hope you’re better at it now than you were two years ago.”

  “We are. But that’s not all I do. Gorgeous view, isn’t it?”

  I stared at him. Did he mean . . .

  I responded, “I always find looking at this so calming,” and we went through the whole inane conversation that Org members use to identify each other.

  “Why did you do that, Joe?”

  “I realized that you saw me recognize your bracelet. You’re at Taholah a lot, with your real name. I didn’t want you worrying I’m DAS or reporting this to your cell. We’re not supposed to know each other.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t wear your bracelet here,” he said, unsmiling. It was clearly an order, something I would ordinarily resent, but he was right. Then he added another order. “And get someplace warm to get out of those wet clothes. The water temperature is forty-six Fahrenheit.”

  “Okay. But, Joe—will you do something for me?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Please. If the algae starts producing domoic acid again . . . will you tell me? As Renata Black, from a NOAA employee? Nothing to do with the Org.”

  I don’t know what my face showed, how much naked need. Whatever it was, or for some reason of his own, Joe agreed.

  The Blob formed on the water that summer but did not produce toxin. The country was still in economic chaos from the Catastrophe. I looked up NOAA on the internet; its website detailed the reductions in staff and activities that had been made as funding was cut by Congress. The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife was the only one monitoring P-nitzschia.

  I resumed visiting the beach. Whenever Joe was there, he talked about algae blooms, telling me things I already knew from the internet. Fifty percent of the fertilizer used on crops was not taken up by plants, was washed into the watershed, and ended up in the ocean, where its nutrients fed lush blooms. Did that mean the Org was working on crops that would not need so much fertilizer, that might, for instance, be able to fix their own nitrogen from the air or soil? I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have told me, not even if he knew.

  I kept going to the beach, making the long drive three or four times a week, all that summer and then even after the autumn rains had started.

  Eventually, from my persistence or his compassion, and undoubtedly with permission from higher in the Org, he told me what his cell was actually trying to accomplish, and for the first time since Ian’s death five years ago, I broke down and cried.

  2032: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  TWO DAYS after Lisa Anderson had been found in the woods, I called Naomi from my apartment in Seattle. Lisa was being discharged from the clinic and was doing as well as could be expected. Naomi’s sons had not found Lisa’s attackers. I was grateful for that, and I think Naomi was, too. She didn’t need any more of her family ensnared in the United States justice system, and certainly not as indicted murderers.

  Today, a Saturday, I had two stations to visit, not too far apart. At a Keep It Safe!, I changed from Renata Black to Caroline Denton. Tom was not with me; for the time being, he would know the location of only the carrot station. Kyle was being his usual cautious self.

  Miles later, I parked my car in the lot of a supermarket and walked along increasingly rural roads, wearing a sunhat with a wide brim, until I reached an isolated farmhouse with an attached greenhouse.

  Jamie Chuchua met me at the door. “Caro. You just caught me.”

  “Hey, Jamie. Just a routine check to see what’s going on with the teff.”

  Her face lit up. Jamie was sixty-nine, white-haired, and beautiful as I will never be. Perfect bone structure and huge expressive eyes, both attributes that lasted. She was chief for this station, a geneticist passionately committed to teff.

  She said, “Come on back and I’ll show you. Ben has done wonderful things since you were here last.”

  We walked through the spacious farmhouse kitchen—pointlessly spacious since only Jamie lived here. Ben and Tessa, also geneticists, lived and worked elsewhere and donated assistance here part time. Jamie and I passed into t
he greenhouse. Immediately I could feel my skin tighten. It must have been over a hundred degrees, with zero humidity. The earth in the raised planting beds was gray and cracked, the plants in them withered. The greenhouse was a drought-ridden corner of Ethiopia.

  Or a preview of what parts of Eastern Washington were becoming. And, presumably, the Midwest could become in the future.

  “Look.” Jamie pointed at a bed in the back. Its soil was just as cracked and sere as the others, but green shoots pushed toward the sunlit roof.

  Jamie said, “Grown with half the water that produced the plants in that bed to the left, and just as healthy. So far, anyway.”

  The plants looked like foot-high, pale-green grasses, each tipped with tiny grains of teff. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, a third of all arable land grows teff, which can survive droughts that are not too severe, even when the soil is so dry that it heaves and splits, stressing plant roots. Jamie’s station was engineering teff for conditions even drier than that.

  She said, “Caro, we’re down to a projected 100 millimeters of water. If Ben and I—but this is mostly Ben’s work—can keep it at that, or even at 150, we’re home!”

  Teff needs a minimum of 250 millimeters of water during its growth cycle. Dropping that number to 100 millimeters would enable hundreds of thousands of people to survive famine. I said, “That’s wonderful.”

  “It is!” Jamie’s face looked as if she’d swallowed the sun. “You’ll have a good report to take back to Kyle. But there’s more. This variety should, if all the engineering works, have bigger seeds, meaning more nutritional yield per plant. Oh, and come into the kitchen to taste the newest dish.”

  I trailed behind her, glad to escape the heat of the greenhouse but unwilling to taste the new dish. I don’t like teff. It’s a valuable food: nourishing, nutty, versatile. You can use it to make porridge, muffins, a spongy and fermented bread called injera, an alcoholic beverage. It’s gluten-free, protein-rich, and not susceptible to the mycotoxins that afflict many African staple crops. I still don’t like it. It tastes like sawdust to me. Nutty and nutritious sawdust.