Nebula Awards Showcase 2003

by Nancy Kress

  “My mother.” Frowning, she shook her head. “She’s calling me home.”

  “Please!” Casey begged her. “Can’t you stay a little longer? You are the only friend we’ve found. I don’t know what we can do without you.”

  “I wish I could help you, but my mother is afraid for me.”

  “I wondered if you weren’t in danger.” He glanced out across the valley. “We saw a lion. Your really shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  “It’s not the lion.” She shook her head. “I know him. A wonderful friend, so fast and strong and fierce.” Her eyes shone at the recollection. “And I know a Bengal tiger. He was hiding in the brush because he was afraid of people. I taught him that we would never hurt him. Once he let me ride him when he chased a gazelle. It was wonderfully exciting.”

  Her voice grew solemn.

  “I’m glad the gazelle got away, though the tiger was hungry and very disappointed. I try to forgive him, because I know he has to kill for food, like all the lions and leopards. They must kill, to stay alive. My mother says it is the way of nature, and entirely necessary. Too many grazing things would destroy the grass and finally starve themselves.”

  We stared again, wondering at her.

  “How did you tame the tiger?”

  “I think the nanorobs help me reach his mind, the way I touch yours. He learned that I respect him. We are good friends. He would fight to protect me, even from you.”

  “Is your mother afraid of us?”

  She picked up the basket and stood shifting on her feet, frowning at us uncertainly.

  “The nanorobs—” She hesitated. “I trust you, but the nanorobs—”

  She stopped again.

  “I thought you said nanorobs were good.”

  “That’s the problem.” She hesitated, trouble on her face. “My mother says you have none. She can’t reach your minds. You do not hear when she speaks to you. She says you don’t belong, because you are not one of us. What she fears—what she fears is you.”

  Speechless, Casey blinked at her sadly.

  “I am sorry to go so soon.” With a solemn little bow for each of us, she shook our hands. “Sorry you have no nanorobs. Sorry my mother is so anxious. Sorry to say good-bye.”

  “Please tell your father—” Casey began.

  “He knows,” she said. “He is sorry you came here.”

  Walking away with her basket, she turned to wave her hand at us, her face framed for a moment by the wide-brimmed hat. I thought she was going to speak, but in a moment she was gone.

  “Beautiful!” Casey whispered. “She’ll grow up to be another Mona.”

  Looking back toward the copied monuments of the old Earth, the copied station dome shining on the copied Tycho rim, I saw a dark-maned lion striding across the valley toward the pool where the elephants had drunk. Three smaller females followed. None of them our friends. I shivered.

  5

  We wandered on up the valley after Tling left us, keeping clear of the trees and trying to stay alert for danger or any hint of help.

  “If Sandor lives out here,” Casey said, “there must be others. People, I hope, who won’t take us for robots.”

  We stopped to watch impala drinking at a water hole. They simply raised their heads to look at us, but fled when a cheetah burst out of a thicket. The smallest was too slow. The cheetah knocked it down and carried it back into the brush.

  “No nanorobs for them,” Pepe muttered. “Or us.”

  We tramped on, finding no sign of anything human. By midafternoon, hungry and thirsty again, with nothing human in view ahead, we sat down to rest on an outcropping of rock. Pepe dug a little holo of Tanya out of his breast pocket and passed it to show us her dark-eyed smile.

  “If we hadn’t lost the radio—” He caught himself, with a stiff little grin. “Still, I guess we wouldn’t call. I’d love to hear her voice. I know she’s anxious, but I wouldn’t want her to know the fix we’re in—”

  He stopped when a shadow flickered across the holo. Looking up, we found a silvery slider craft dropping to the grass a few yards from us. An oval door dilated in the side of it. Tling jumped out.

  “We found you!” she cried. “Even with no nanorobs. Here is my mother.”

  A slender woman came out behind her, laughing at Pepe when he tried to repeat the name she gave us.

  “She says you can just call her Lo.”

  Tling still wore the blouse and skirt, with her wide-brimmed hat, but Lo was nude except for a gauzy blue sash worn over her shoulder. As graceful and trim, and nearly as sexless as Sandor, she had the same cream-colored skin, already darkening where the sun struck it, but she had a thick crown of bright red-brown curls instead of Sandor’s cap of sleek fur.

  “Dr. Yare.” Tling spoke carefully to let us hear. “Mr. Navarro. Mr. Kell, who is also called El Chino. They were cloned at Tycho Station from prehistoric tissue specimens.”

  “You were cloned for duty there.” Lo eyed us severely. “How did you get here?”

  “We lied to the ship.” Casey straightened wryly to face her. “We did it because we didn’t want to live out our lives in that pit on the Moon. I won’t say I’m sorry, but now we are in trouble. I don’t want to die.”

  “You will die,” she told him bluntly. “Like all your kind. You carry no nanorobs.”

  “I guess.” He shrugged. “But first we want a chance to live.”

  “Mother, please!” Tling caught her hand. “With no nanorobs, they are in immediate danger here. Can we help them stay alive?”

  “That depends on your father.”

  “I tried to ask him,” Tling said. “He didn’t answer.”

  We watched Lo’s solemn frown, saw Tling’s deepening trouble.

  “I wish you had nanorobs.” She turned at last to translate for us. “My father has gone out to meet an interstellar ship that has just come back after eight hundred years away. The officers are telling him a very strange story.”

  She looked up at her mother, as if listening.

  “It carried colonists for the planets of the star Enthel, which is four hundred light-years toward the galactic core. They had taken off with no warning of trouble. The destination planet had been surveyed and opened for settlement. It had rich natural resources, with no native life to be protected. Navigation algorithms for the flight had been tested, occupation priorities secured.”

  She stared up at the sky, in baffled dismay.

  “Now the ship has returned, two thousand colonists still aboard.”

  Casey asked what had gone wrong. We waited, watching their anxious frowns.

  “My father is inquiring.” Tling turned back to us. “He’s afraid of something dreadful.”

  “It must have been dreadful,” Pepe whispered. “Imagine eight hundred years on a ship in space!”

  “Only instants for them.” Tling shook her head, smiling at him. “Time stops, remember, at the speed of light. By their own time, they left only yesterday. Yet their situation is still hard enough. Their friends are scattered away. Their whole world is gone. They feel lost and desperate.”

  She turned to her mother. “Why couldn’t they land?”

  Her mother listened again. Far out across the valley I saw a little herd of zebras running. I couldn’t see what had frightened them.

  “My father is asking,” she told us at last. “The passengers were not told why the ship had to turn back. The officers have promised a statement, but my father says they can’t agree on what to say. They aren’t sure what they found on the destination planet. He believes they’re afraid to say what they believe.”

  The running zebras veered aside. I saw the tawny flash of a lion charging to meet them, saw a limping zebra go down. My own ankle was aching from a stone that had turned under my foot, and I felt as helpless as the zebra.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Dunk.” Tling reached to touch my arm. “My father is very busy with the ship. I don’t know what he can do with you, but I don’t want the anim
als to kill you. I think we can keep you safe till he comes home. Can’t we, mother?”

  Her lips pressed tight, Lo shrugged as if she had forgotten us.

  “Please, mother. I know they are primitives, but they would never harm me. I can understand them the way I understand the animals. They are hungry and afraid, with nowhere else to go.”

  Lo stood motionless for a moment, frowning at us.

  “Get in.”

  She beckoned us into the flyer and lifted her face again as if listening to the sky.

  •

  We soared toward a rocky hill and landed on a level ledge near the summit. Climbing out, we looked down across the grassy valley and over the ridge to Sandor’s memorial just beyond. Closer than I expected, I found the bright metal glint of the rebuilt spaceplane on the mall, the Capitol dome and the Washington obelisk, the white marble sheen of the Egyptian pyramid looming out of green forest beyond.

  “My father picked this spot.” Tling nodded toward the cliff. “He wanted to watch the memorial built.”

  While her mother stood listening intently at the sky, Tling inspected our mudstained safari suits.

  “You need a bath,” she decided, “before you eat.”

  Running ahead, she took us down an arched tunnel into the hill and showed me into a room far larger than my cell below the station dome. Warm water sprayed me when I stepped into the shower, warm air dried me. A human-shaped robot handed me my clothing when I came out, clean and neatly folded. It guided me to a room where Tling was already sitting with Pepe and Casey at a table set with plates around a pyramid of fragrant fruit.

  “Mr. Chino asked about my mother.” She looked up to smile at me. “You saw that she’s different, with different nanorobs. She comes from the Garenkrake system, three hundred light-years away. Its people had forgotten where they came from. She wanted to know. When her search for the mother planet brought her here, she found my father already digging at the Tycho site. They’ve worked together ever since.”

  Pepe and Casey were already eating. Casey turned to Tling, who was nibbling delicately at something that looked like a huge purple orchid.

  “What do you think will happen to us?”

  “I’ll ask my father when I can.” She glanced toward the ceiling. “He is still busy with the ship’s officers. I’m sorry you’re afraid of my mother. She doesn’t hate you, not really. If she seems cool to you, it’s just because she has worked so long at the site, digging up relics of the first world. She thinks you seem so—so primitive.”

  She shook her head at our uneasy frowns.

  “You told her you lied to the ship.” She looked at Casey. “That bothers her, because the nanorobs do not transmit untruths or let people hurt each other. She feels sorry for you.”

  Pepe winced. “We feel sorry for ourselves.”

  •

  Tling sat for a minute, silently, frowning, and turned back to us.

  “The ship is big trouble for my father,” she told us. “It leaves him no time for you. He says you should have stayed on the Moon.”

  “I know.” Casey shrugged. “But we’re here. We can’t go back. We want to stay alive.”

  “I feel your fear.” She gave us an uneasy smile. “My father’s too busy to talk to you, but if you’ll come to my room, there is news about the ship.”

  The room must have been her nursery. In one corner was a child’s bed piled with dolls and toys, a cradle on the floor beside it. The wall above was alive with a scenic holo. Long-legged birds flew away from a water hole when a tiger came out of tall grass to drink. A zebra stallion ventured warily close, snuffing at us. A prowling leopard froze and ran from a bull elephant. She gestured at the wall.

  “I was a baby here, learning to love the animals.”

  That green landscape was suddenly gone. The wall had become a wide window that showed us great spacecraft drifting though empty blackness. Blinding highlights glared where the Sun struck it. The rest was lost in shadow, but I made out a thick bright metal disk, slowly turning. Tiny-looking sliders clung around a bulging dome at its center.

  “It’s in parking orbit, waiting for anywhere to go,” Tling said. “Let’s look inside.”

  She gave us glimpses of the curving floors where the spin created a false gravity. People sat in rows of seats like those in holos of ancient aircraft. More stood crowded in aisles and corridors. I heard scraps of hushed and anxious talk.

  “. . . home on a Pacific island.”

  The camera caught a woman with a crown of what looked like bright golden feathers instead of hair. Holding a whimpering baby in one arm, the other around a grim-faced man, she was answering questions from someone we didn’t see. The voice we heard was Tling’s.

  “It’s hard for us.” Her lips were not moving, but the voice went sharp with her distress. “We had a good life there. Mark’s an imagineer. I was earning a good living as a genetic artist, designing ornamentals to special order. We are not the pioneer type, but we did want a baby.” An ironic wry smile twisted her lips. “A dream come true!”

  She lifted the infant to kiss its gold-capped head.

  “Look at us now.” She smiled sadly at the child. “We spent our savings for a vision of paradise on Fendris Four. A tropical beach-front between the surf and a bamboo forest, snow on a volcanic cone behind it. A hundred families of us, all friends forever.”

  She sighed and rocked the baby.

  “They didn’t let us off the ship. Or even tell us why. We’re desperate, with our money gone and baby to care for. Now they say there’s nowhere else we can go.”

  •

  The wall flickered and the holos came back with monkeys chattering in jungle treetops.

  “That’s the problem,” Tling said. “Two thousand people like them, stuck on the ship with nowhere to live. My father’s problem now, since the council voted to put him in charge.”

  Casey asked, “Why can’t they leave the ship?”

  “If you don’t understand—” She was silent for a moment. “My mother says it’s the way of the nanorobs. They won’t let people overrun the planet and use it up like my mother says the primitives did, back before the impacts. Births must be balanced by migration. Those unlucky people lost their space when they left Earth.”

  “Eight hundred years ago?”

  “Eight hundred of our time.” She shrugged. “A day or so of theirs.”

  “What can your father do for them?”

  “My mother says he’s still searching for a safe destination.”

  “If he can’t find one—” Casey frowned. “And they can’t come home. It seems terribly unfair. Do you let the nanorobs rule you?”

  “Rule us?” Puzzled, she turned her head to listen and nodded at the wall. “You don’t understand. They do unite us, but there is no conflict. They live in all of us, acting to keep us alive and well, guiding us to stay free and happy, but moving us only by our own consent. My mother says they are part of what you used to call the unconscious.”

  “Those people on the ship?” Doubtfully, Casey frowned. “Still alive, I guess, but not free to get off or happy at all.”

  “They are troubled.” Nodding soberly, she listened again. “But my mother says I should explain the nanorob way. She says the old primitives lived in what she calls the way of the jungle genes, back when survival required traits of selfish aggression. The nanorobs have let us change our genes to escape the greed and jealousy and violence that led to so much crime and war and pain on the ancient Earth. They guide us toward what is best for all. My mother says the people on the ship will be content to follow the nanorob way when my father has helped them find it.”

  She turned her head. “I heard my mother call.”

  I hadn’t heard a thing, but she ran out of the room. In the holo wall, high-shouldered wildebeest were leaping off a cliff to swim across a river. One stumbled, toppled, vanished under the rapid water. We watched in dismal silence till Casey turned to frown at Pepe and me.

 
; “I don’t think I like the nanorob way.”

  We had begun to understand why Sandor had no place on Earth for us.

  6

  “Dear sirs, I must beg you to excuse us.”

  Tling made a careful little bow and explained that her mother was taking her to dance and music practice, then going on to a meeting about the people on the stranded ship. We were left alone with the robots. They were man-shaped, ivory-colored, blank-faced. Lacking nanorobs, they were voice-controlled.

  Casey tried to question them about the population, cities, and industries of the new Earth, but they had been programmed only for domestic service, with no English or information about anything else. Defeated by their blank-lensed stares, we sat out on the terrace, looking down across the memorial and contemplating our own uncertain future, till they called us in for dinner.

  The dishes they served us were strange, but Pepe urged us to eat while we could.

  “¿Mañana?” He shook his head uneasily. “¿Quién sabe?”

  Night was falling before we got back to the terrace. A thin Moon was setting in the west. In the east, a locomotive headlight flashed across the memorial. The mall was lit for evening tours, the Taj Mahal a glowing gem, the Great Pyramid an ivory island in the creeping dusk. The robots had our beds ready when the light went out. They had served wine with dinner, and I slept without a dream.

  Awake early next morning, rested again and lifted with unreasonable hope, I found Tling standing outside at the end of the terrace, looking down across the valley. She had hair like her mother’s, not feathers or fur, but blonde and cropped short. Despite the awesome power of her nanorobs, I thought she looked very small and vulnerable. She started when I spoke.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dunk.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand and tried to smile. I saw that her eyes were puffy and red. “How is your ankle?”

  “Better.”

  “I was worried.” She found a pale smile. “Because you have no symbiotes to help repair such injuries.”

  I asked if she had heard from her father and the emigrant ship. She turned silently to look again across the sunlit valley and the memorial. I saw the far plume of steam from an early train crawling over the bridge toward the Sphinx.