by Nancy Kress
“This is a teff pudding,” Jamie said, taking a small dish out of the fridge. “Go ahead, taste.”
I did. “I taste maple syrup.” Maple-favored sawdust. “A lot of maple syrup in Ethiopia, is there?”
“That one’s for the potential American market,” said a deep masculine voice. Ben stood in the doorway, grinning. Originally from Ethiopia, he still had a slight accent and was one of the handsomest men I ever met.
“Well, some people might like it,” I said, putting the pudding dish on the counter.
Ben laughed. “I admire your honesty, Caro. You never soft-pedal anything.”
Jake’s voice in my head: Can’t you ever pick tact over honesty?
Jamie said, “Fortunately, ‘some people’ do like teff. Me, for instance.”
“You’re doing great here, Ben, Jamie. Kyle will be thrilled.”
Jamie said, “How could you tell? He always looks like he’s tasting lemons.” She was slightly pissed that I wasn’t more enthusiastic about the pudding.
I collected their data cubes and started the long trudge back to my car. Clouds gathered overhead. Let it rain, I prayed to gods I didn’t believe in. Please let it rain. It’s starting again, Naomi had said last night. All this summer, the Blob had lain off the coast, green and black in the sunlight, killing everything underneath it. Now, it was beginning to produce domoic acid. The beaches would be closed, but that would not prevent the deaths of pelicans, sooty shearwaters, otters, sea lions. P-nitzschia had even killed whales. Rain would dissolve the Blob.
The second station I visited was modifying intermediate wheatgrass, a grain originally from Iran. This work was aimed straight at the United States. All those amber waves of grain of conventional wheat were annuals, with shallow roots that in times of drought—and the plains states were having much more frequent droughts—could neither reach water nor hold the soil against dust storms. Intermediate wheatgrass is a perennial, with a deep root system. It doesn’t need to be replanted each year. The seeds are nutritious, but too small, with a yield only half that of domestic wheat. The Org was trying to engineer the plant for both bigger seeds and a higher yield. I picked up the station’s report.
Back at the Keep It Safe!, I switched phones and IDs and took out my Contexts. No messages on the Renata phone from Naomi or Joe. As I went to turn off the Caroline phone, it rang.
I stared at it. This phone was only supposed to be used if I found emergency conditions at the teff station. It shouldn’t ring. Cell phone conversations were way too easy to hack.
The number was the carrot station in Eastern Washington. My fingers shook. “Hello?”
“They’re hitting us now!” Jean Cathcart said. “Don’t come, tell Kyle—get away, you! Don’t touch me! Don’t you—” The connection broke.
I followed procedures. I took the phone into the parking lot, removed the data card, and dissolved it in the jar of acid in the glove compartment. I tossed the empty shell into a dumpster and drove quickly, but not so quickly as to attract attention, back to Seattle. I had to tell Kyle. I was the carrot-station liaison, and Kyle had no traceable connection to the station except through me or Jonas. This was why we were organized the way we were.
Who had hit the carrot station? The feds, the state, a misguided eco-group, a band of lunatic-fringe haters? I hoped it was DAS. That way, Louis and Jean and Miguel would at least be physically intact, under arrest but alive. The same hadn’t been always true for Org members taken by haters.
But the station was gone. Whoever had raided it would destroy the greenhouses, the carrots, the years of work to create safe, fruitful crops to feed a developing world that needed them and a developed world that, if global warming continued to accelerate, was going to need them sooner than it thought. I saw again the rows of Danvers carrots that could grow in salty water, in drought, in the Org’s hopeful dreams.
Driving back to Seattle, I brought up the news on my dashboard screen. Internet news was often contradictory, slanted, and stunningly inaccurate. But there was nothing about the attack on the station.
From sources of his own, Kyle had already heard. We stood in the side yard, pretending to admire Susan’s roses, as I told him exactly what Jean had said. He nodded. “It was DAS.”
I said, “Better than if it weren’t.”
“Yes. RightNews leaked video footage of the arrests. The FBI has surrounded the station, wearing hazmat suits.”
“Christ, it’s carrots, not weaponized anthrax!”
“To be fair, DAS doesn’t know that. But there’s something else. I don’t know if it’s true, but a DAS spokesperson said they found the farm due to a tip received anonymously on their hotline.”
I went cold. “That could mean anything. A nosy neighbor, a suspicious relative—”
“I don’t think so. The spokesperson gave quite a speech: protecting the American people, no reprise of the Catastrophe, you can imagine the rest. Death to us monsters who would play God. I suspect he’s going to be in trouble with his superiors for grandstanding. But he also said the tip came from someone ‘inside one of these unlawful terrorist organizations’ doing genetic engineering. I believed him.”
“No,” I said instantly. “It’s just disinformation. Divide and conquer. They want us to think we have a mole who betrayed us.”
“Or, “ Kyle said, “we really do.”
Susan called to us from an open upstairs window. I pretended not to hear her, saying quickly, “What have you found about the agent missing from the house? Anything else you can tell me?”
“No. Not yet. I—Susan! Stop yelling!”
It was a measure of Kyle’s agitation that he shouted at his wife. Kyle never shouted.
Susan yelled back, “I asked if Caroline wants to come in for cake and coffee!”
“Yes,” I shouted. “Thank you!”
Kyle stared at me. “I don’t know any more than I’ve told you, Renata. Badgering me won’t help.”
I stared back. Badgering him, even if silently in Susan’s presence, was all I had.
Kyle led me indoors. Susan served us strong coffee and delicious, homemade cake. But she wasn’t herself, any more than Kyle was, although I would have bet my life that Kyle never told her anything about the Org.
“This is wonderful cake,” I said to her.
“Thank you.” A forced, too-bright smile.
Kyle stood abruptly. “I have a client arriving in a few minutes. Nice to see you, Caroline. Bye.”
I didn’t take the hint. Kyle stood there a few moments more and then left, looking displeased.
“Susan, could I have the recipe for this incredible cake?”
She blinked. “I didn’t know you ever baked.”
“I’m thinking of learning. Is this cake hard?”
“No. Yes, a little. I mean—I’ll get the recipe for you.” She stood.
I put my hand on hers, a first. “Susan—what’s wrong? I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help noticing how upset you and Kyle both seem . . . did I do something to offend you?”
It doesn’t take much to get women like Susan, trusting and warm and open, to confide in you. An expression of concern, a touch of the hand, the promise of sympathy. She blurted out, “We might lose our house!”
“Your house?” Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t that.
She sat down again. “You’re sweet to notice, Caroline. But I’ve been diagnosed with . . . well, it doesn’t matter what. I won’t die. But the treatments Kyle wants me to have are new, the insurance doesn’t cover them, and I won’t use the girls’ education funds. I won’t. So we might have to sell the house, and even then . . . I don’t know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Susan put her hands over her face, but only for a moment before she rallied. She was stronger than I’d thought.
“It’ll be all right. We’ll manage. As long as we have each other, we’ll be all right. And Caro, I’m so sorry to burden you with this. Don’t worry about us.”
> Stronger, and good all the way through. She genuinely thought I’d find her confidence a worrisome burden because she would have if our situations were reversed. She genuinely thought I was a much nicer person than I was.
I said the meaningless thing people always say. “If I can do anything . . .”
“Thank you. Let me get that recipe for you. You’ll love baking this cake.”
In my apartment, I watched news streams all evening. Most were worthless: biased rehashings of the raid or anti-genemod rants full of wrong information. But Kyle was right about the grandstanding “first responder.” Everything he said pointed to someone inside the Org tipping off DAS about the carrot station.
Who?
And how could I find out? I wasn’t law enforcement, wasn’t a lawyer, wasn’t a scientist, wasn’t even one of the anonymous rich donors funding the Org. I was just an amateur who believed in a cause. My role was to wait for whatever information the Org chose to give me about the raid.
Only . . . I couldn’t. I had to know, had to put somewhere my anger over this latest outrage. Lisa Anderson, the carrot station, even Ian’s death—they were all mixed up together in my mind, all cruelties that should not have happened. Not to self-sacrificing scientists and two children.
So . . . who?
Tom was an unknown quantity, at least to me. At our first lunch, he’d been insistent on talking to me about seafood, as if he knew something he shouldn’t. He knew about the carrot station but not the other stations. Was it only coincidence that only the carrot station had been raided?
April was a ditz, brilliant on the computer and weird everywhere else. I remembered her saying as she told the long story about the time-as-a-bread-loaf lecture, “People are irrational.” Was she? Enough to change her mind about the Org and betray us?
Jonas had been waiting a long time for a promotion within the Org. Did he think he’d waited too long, been passed over too often, most recently in favor of Kyle? Hadn’t some American FBI agent turned mole for the Russians because he’d been passed over for promotion? I couldn’t remember his name.
Kyle needed money or he would lose his house. But it couldn’t be Kyle. No. It could not.
Or had leverage that I couldn’t even imagine been brought to bear on those who’d worked at the carrot station? Louis Weinberg, Jean Cathcart, Miguel Gomez. The last two weren’t even their real names. I knew nothing about Jean’s or Miguel’s personal lives, past lives, current beliefs. I had secrets, such as the information I got periodically from Joe Peck. Jean and Miguel and even Louis could have secrets, too.
If we didn’t have a mole in our cell and the leak had come farther up the chain of command, then the feds could be negotiating with someone who could betray more of the Org. Or all of it. In that case, the carrot station had been just a preliminary raid.
I was a courier. Only that. I had no way to know anything, discover anything, do anything. All I could do was wait for instructions.
At 3:00 a.m. I bolted awake in my bedroom. I had just dreamed of giant carrots raping Lisa Anderson, a vision so poised between horror and triviality that it woke me in shame, in anger, in fear. My tee, panties, and sheets were soaked with sweat, the sheets twisted into grotesque shapes by my thrashing.
Who?
Jeremy phoned me early the next morning. “Renata, where are you?”
I didn’t want to tell him that I was on my way to the Peninsula, driving blearily after three hours of sleep, careful to observe the speed limit. I wanted, pointlessly, to look at the newly lethal Blob. Maybe Joe would have additional information about its sudden deadliness. I said, “Why? Has something happened?”
“Yes, I think Naomi is going to call you any minute,” he said, talking so fast that he sounded like a New Yorker, not a Montanan. “The tribal police arrested one of the men they think assaulted Lisa Anderson. Allegedly he was bragging in a bar, drunk on his ass. They’re holding him but—”
“When? When did all this happen, and where?”
“Two a.m., at Randy’s,” he said, which was the most significant part of the story. Randy’s was a sleazy dive in Aberdeen, off tribal lands, and kidnapping is a federal crime. Tribal police could arrest the fucker but then needed U.S. law enforcement to take it from there.
Jeremy continued, “A U.S. deputy is holding him, but they need Lisa to ID him, and her mother won’t let her look at so much as a photo to make an identification. The deputy’s going to let the perp go. The deputy is a bigoted jackass. He says the arrest was illegal anyway—which it wasn’t—and there’ll be trouble for tribal police for making it.”
“Christ!” I said. If the Quinault Nation would agree to cross-deputization of federal and tribal law enforcement, the tribal police would be on stronger ground. But I understood all the reasons why they didn’t. Indigenous people don’t have a lot of reason to share what power the state has allowed them.
Jeremy was still talking. “I’m sending Matt Carter out there to handle the legal end, but it’ll be at least four hours ’til he arrives. Naomi will call to ask you to—”
“Phone’s ringing now. I got it.”
Naomi explained the situation. I told her I’d be there in twenty minutes. And to hell with the speed limit.
“No,” Marina Anderson said. “No no no. Lisa’s been through enough!”
Beyond the living room window of the Anderson house in Taholah, the ocean lay calm, choked with the Blob. Half of Taholah depended on salmon fishing for economic survival, and the Blob had made salmon runs puny this year. Marina and Naomi’s living room had the stretched, thin feel of poverty looming in the corners. Naomi sat in a worn brown armchair, waiting for me to deal with Marina by using the one weapon I possessed and she did not.
Marina was not my favorite person on the reservation. I didn’t mind her general rudeness to me, but she lacked her mother’s clarity. Marina was swayed by the last person she’d talked to or the last thing she’d seen on TV. She had no self-control, and she made bad choices in men, in partying, in a petty-arrest record off the reservation. More than once, Jeremy had spent precious resources defending Marina. She loved Lisa but was not, in my view, an attentive mother. Naomi was, and now Naomi wanted me to use motherhood against Marina to change Marina’s mind.
“No,” Marina said again. “Not even a photo. Because it won’t do any good! You should know that, white lady! White law never does any good for us!”
I didn’t mention the good that Jeremy had done for her. This called for restraint, not one of my shining attributes. “I know, Marina. You’re right about that. But in this case, I do know how you feel because—”
“Oh, right! You know how I feel because you have a daughter who was kidnapped and raped at thirteen years old!”
“No,” I said. “I had a son who was killed right here at eleven years old.”
It stopped her, as it was designed to. If she’d ever heard of Ian’s death, she’d forgotten it, as she forgot everything not connected directly with herself. But she was silent for only a moment. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. He died here, a little farther down the beach. He was. . .”
I couldn’t go on. I hated this, making Ian’s death a tool to manipulate this grieving mother, using Ian. . .
“Tell me,” Marina commanded, and the avidity in her voice made me want to hit her. To her, it was just a story, and a bad story happening to a Caucasian. But I saw the compassion in Naomi’s eyes, and the need. Her sons had spent days looking for the rapists, and if they found the attackers before the law did, Naomi could lose her sons to violence or prison. I also thought of Lisa, in the room beyond. Was she awake? Listening?
“Tell me what happened to your son,” Marina said again. And I did.
When I finished, Marina said, “So you’re thinking I should be some kind of grateful because at least my kid is alive.”
“No. I’m thinking that I would give anything to get justice for my kid, and I can’t, and you can. Because we
’ll help you, fight for you, commit all the legal help we can, and if this fucker really did rape Lisa, he’ll be locked up where he can’t hurt any more children.”
“You promise? You promise that if I let Lisa identify him, he’ll go to prison?”
I said nothing. I knew, and she knew, that legal cases were never that simple.
“You promise?” Marina pushed. Was she looking for a “gotcha” moment? I couldn’t give it to her.
“I promise we’ll commit the resources, we’ll follow through, we’ll move heaven and earth to convict—if Lisa identifies this scumbag. Also, if Matt Carter—he’s a U.S. attorney, he’s good, and he’s on his way here—can get this guy to flip, we might get all three of them.”
“But you promise you’ll do all that? You promise on Ian’s grave?”
Naomi stood, finally showing her anger. I didn’t want that. I clenched my fist and said, “I promise on Ian’s grave.”
Only for you, Lisa.
“Still no,” Marina said. “Too hard on Lisa. She isn’t doing it.”
She’d never intended to agree. And she’d made me relive the whole nightmare of Ian’s death. A red mist took my brain, and I don’t know what I would have done if the bedroom door hadn’t opened. Lisa stood there, her face still bruised, one eye swollen and purpled. She wore a white nightgown with little flowers printed on it, but there was nothing childish about the look on her face. She was Naomi, sixty years ago.
“I am doing it,” Lisa said. “Looking at pictures and then at live men. I’m doing it.”
She paused; this was hard for her, but she was determined. Her bare toes below the hem of the nightgown curled in a tension that clutched at my heart.
“And Renata,” she said in her girlish treble, “I’m sorry about your kid. That’s really sad.”
When I left, Matt Carter was talking gently to Lisa, who pressed close to her grandmother’s side. I didn’t stay for the mug-shot identification that, eventually, would be followed by a lineup ID in person. I felt as exhausted as if I’d run a marathon.
