Morning Child and Other Stories

by Gardner Dozois

  A vast surge of bitterness shot through her. Useless old woman. Never good for anything in your whole damn life. Couldn’t keep your husband alive, couldn’t save your daughter. Couldn’t even protect your own grandchild. You’d think if you’d be able to do anything, one miserable thing that made a difference in this foul and pestilent existence, that made it worthwhile that you were ever alive in the first place, at least you could save your own grand-daughter. A six-year-old child! Why was it that she was dead and you were still alive, living on and on into a bleak morning that had no reason left in it for you to be alive anymore, and your traitor lungs continuing to pump, your heart to beat, after Jennifer was dead? After everyone you ever cared about was gone? What was the point? Why couldn’t she have been allowed to trade her life for the child’s? You old fool, couldn’t you have done one thing right in your life? In your whole useless and pointless life?

  It was bitter and hard for her, almost harder and more cruelly bitter than she could bear, to realize that if Desmond had lived and she had been the one to die instead, that Desmond—much as she’d always disliked him, thought him not worthy of her daughter, looked down on him, much as she still disliked him now, in spite of the fact that he was dead—probably would have been able to save Jennifer from the monster. To save her as she had not been able to. Why hadn’t it worked out that way? Why had the fates instead left the child’s life in her hands? Her useless, good-for-nothing, crippled hands, that had let that life slip through arthritic fingers?

  A draft of cold air. She looked up in time to see the back door swing soundlessly open, letting in a puff and swirl of snow.

  A sinister, black, serpentine shape reared up in the doorway, raising the bulk of its length off the ground, like a cobra coiling to strike.

  It was back.

  The creature was back.

  Fear was her first, instinctive reaction, an icy stab of atavistic terror that made her back away a step or two, and which dimly surprised her, since she would have sworn a moment before that she no longer cared at all if she lived or died. Well, in fact, why struggle anymore? Let it kill her. What did it matter now? She felt resignation begin to glaze over her like a scum of ice forming over a pond, dulling her fear.

  The creature swayed in the doorway. Dawn was beginning to break, the sun not yet over the horizon, but staining the sky a sullen purple-red. The creature was a black silhouette against that sullen red sky, weaving slightly from side to side, rippling sinuously. As yet, it had made no attempt to move forward into the house, to attack her, although she knew how fast it could move. Maybe it was scenting the wind, searching out her presence with whatever strange senses it possessed….

  Still it didn’t move, as one long moment crawled into the next. Maybe it was taunting her, teasing her, playing with her the way a cat plays with a mouse. Enjoying her fear. Making her wait. Relishing her helplessness.

  Suddenly, she was furious. The murderous creature was toying with her! Mocking her! Rage instantly melted the ice of resignation and futility. If she was too late to save Jennifer, she could still do one worthwhile thing before she died. She could take this obscenity with her. She could make sure that it slaughtered no one else’s children.

  She could make it pay. Or at least die trying.

  The ax was still resting against the wall, where she had put it what seemed like years ago now, handle up, a few feet away from the cot; she could just see it at the edge of her peripheral vision. Without turning, she took a slow, slow sideways step toward it, not looking away from the creature, not turning her head, not daring to do anything that might break the spell of immobility. She took another slow sideways step, and another, inching along like a crab. Slowly, still without turning her head, she stretched her hand back behind her, trying to move her body as little as possible, groping for the ax-handle.

  As she touched it, her hand wrapping itself solidly around the wooden handle, the creature spoke to her.

  Kill me, it said.

  It struggled against the fire! fear! pain! horror! that welled up through its being. But the torrent of voltage, wild and undirected and irresistible, drove its consciousness helplessly before the flood, driving it through that protective hedge of forces, through the whitening, searing agony of the unbearable, into memories far worse.

  It was falling. Tightly wrapped within a neatly calculated bundle of shielding, its consciousness a pure nub at the center of calming forces, it descended from space, down to the Earth below, at last at the end of a journey that had taken many decades, almost half a century, with the real beginning of its Mission yet ahead. But then—impossible!—it felt a blast of radiation, raking through the core of its being, scrambling circuits. The shielding was not good enough! It wasn’t holding! It knew about the Van Allen radiation belt, of course, and that had been taken into account when the voyage was planned; beings with greater science than even its own race could command had confidently predicted that even if the Van Allen belt were to be energized by a spate of sunspots, the radiation could not possibly be strong enough to get through.

  Mistakes happen, though. They were not gods, and neither were any of the other races they knew, however advanced they might be. Sometimes, even with the highest and most subtle of technologies, things go wrong.

  The radiation could not get through, and yet it was getting through. High-level energies sleeted through the tightly interwoven fabric of its substance, leaving maddening pain in their wake, a hundred, a thousand times more agonizing than anything it had ever known, pain not only physical but mental as well—logical chimeras that its rational functions could not deal with, self-contradicting structures that one by one overloaded its higher functions, driving it down the asymptotal curve toward total extinction.

  It was the best qualified of its race for the job ahead, a creature of vast patience, tact, wit, gentleness, diplomatic skill, culture, and erudition—all the commingled powers had agreed on that, just as they agreed that it was the turn of its race to reach out and bring a benighted alien race out of the darkness of provincial ignorance and into Civilization, just as their own race had been so contacted and assimilated into the galactic community thousands of years before. It had been so proud of that, of the responsibility it had been given. But now, it was unraveling in madness and pain, and could feel its rational mind dissolving, and could do nothing to stop the process. It felt its higher functions failing, and automatic systems taking over.

  The ambassador’s race was an ancient and intensely civilized one. Long eons ago, even before contact with the communities of the stars, they had put aside their predatory origins, overridden them with a thousand culturally programmed safeguards. They no more felt the age-old archaic urges than a human felt the need to brachiate.

  The urges were still there though, ancestral voices whispering in the blood, at the very bottom of the brain, as they must be in every corporeal creature who has evolved from a lower—or at least a more basic—form of life.

  One by one, it lost reason, memory, personality; it knew the horror of losing everything that made it itself, and knowing it was losing it, and being unable to stop the process. At last, it would lose even the knowledge that something had been lost, except for a vague trickle of unease at the back of its consciousness. It would be reduced to survival programming, the underlying atavistic ancestral memory whose human equivalent would be the reptilian hindstem.

  From the depths of pain, it had a last fleeting moment of clarity in which to mourn its own passing, and then most of its brain went down.

  Glowing like Lucifer falling, it tumbled from the sky, down to the Earth below.

  The car battery shorted out. There was a puff of acrid black smoke, and then it was free. Instantly, it reacted. Instinct hurled it away from there, away from the trap that had almost killed it, though the window, out into the night.

  Outside, alone in the darkness and the swirling snow, with the Northern Lights still a vaguely troubling presence on the horizon, an unea
sy prickling sensation that it could now control, it came to the full realization of what it had done.

  When she got over the initial shock of hearing the creature speak, Alma Kingsley quickly picked up the ax, bringing it awkwardly around in front of her body so that she could get a better, two-handed grip on it, resting it on her shoulder, ready to swing. She backed away two steps, felt her rear foot bump into the wall, and started to edge sideways again, moving away from the wall a bit (even if it did mean moving a step or two toward the monster) so that she’d have room to swing the ax overhand at the creature if it rushed her, a woodchopper’s stroke. Couldn’t let it pin her against the wall…

  Kill me, it said again.

  She hesitated. She had been figuring out how to do just that, or the best way to try to do it, anyway, deciding that she’d better rush it and try to get a good swing in at it before the big ax grew too heavy for her tired old arms to hold up effectively, do it right now, before she lost her nerve…. But it kept putting her off her stride by speaking to her; she hadn’t known that it could talk.

  It wasn’t “talking” at all, actually—the words seemed to print themselves in her brain somehow, faintly superimposed on reality, like the afterimage of an object you can sometimes see after you close your eyes. But she had no doubt that it was really happening, or that it was the creature who was “speaking” to her.

  Go ahead, it said. Do it now. I won’t try to stop you.

  She came forward a couple of steps, and then stopped, hesitating, wary. This was some kind of trick. It was trying to lure her closer so that it could strike at her, maybe counting on being fast enough to be able to dodge any blow of the ax she might get off at it. When she got close enough, it would attack….

  It will not be difficult, it said persuasively. My physical component is really quite fragile. If you strike at the center of my being hard enough, with something sharp or heavy, that will kill me. That tool you have in your hand will do nicely. I perceive that the handle is made of wood; that will insulate you from any shock. You’ll be perfectly safe.

  “You weren’t so concerned with my safety a few minutes ago,” Alma Kingsley said harshly. “When you were trying to kill me!”

  I was insane then, it said. I have been insane for a long time. But I am insane no longer. The shock that you administered to me has re-integrated my functions. I am sane now.

  “How nice for you!” Rage pulsed through her, and she tightened her grip on the ax. “You unspeakable bastard!”

  It shivered convulsively, and she jumped back a step, thinking it was about to attack. But it didn’t move forward. I know what I did, it said. I am ready to atone.

  “Atone?” She found herself laughing, harsh, cawing, jagged, ugly laughter that tore her throat. “You killed Jennifer! And Desmond! And…and that poor girl!” To her shame, she found she couldn’t summon up the young woman’s name, although she got a flash of her vapid, cheaply pretty face. “Damn you, you even killed my dog!” Tears sprang into her eyes and she blinked them fiercely away. She couldn’t allow it to distract her, let it put her off her guard. As soon as she did, it would strike.

  I know what I did, it repeated. That’s why you have to kill me. It was swaying slightly from side to side now, as if in agitation. Kill me! Strike now! Get it over with. I won’t fight you. I know I deserve to die.

  She tried to say something but the words tangled themselves in her throat and wouldn’t come out. Her head felt as if it was going to explode, and she was shaking all over. “You’re right about that!” she managed to rasp, panting with rage. “You deserve to die a hundred times over!”

  It was shaking too, as though stirred by the same inner wind. I know that, it said. I can’t live with the guilt and the shame. I was sent here on a mission of peace, to bring you the gifts that would allow you to live as civilized creatures, without war, without want and poverty and hatred. Instead, I killed everyone I met! It swayed violently. There could be no worse failure! No worse betrayal of everything that I believe in! Kill me!

  She raised the ax. Images flashed through her mind: Jennifer, her face gray and blistered and burned…Iago collapsing in a pathetic jumble of furry limbs…the girl, the roadhouse pickup, smiling vapidly although amiably as she dug a fork into her eggs…Desmond waving his hands and talking expansively, self-importantly…. She was crying openly now, tears running down her face, breathing in harsh gasps through her mouth, but she didn’t lose sight of the monster, in spite of the tears. She squeezed the wood of the ax-handle until her hands ached. Abruptly, fiercely, she rushed forward, swinging the ax as far back as she could, ready to bring it crashing down.

  A step or two away, she stopped, hesitating, the ax swung high in the air.

  It hadn’t moved, although she was in easy attack distance by now.

  DO IT! it shrieked.

  There was a long frozen moment, as though time itself had stopped. For some reason, she found herself thinking about something she hadn’t allowed herself to consciously think about for decades: her husband’s coffin, shipped by air back from Vietnam, being lowered into a hole dug into the raw red earth on a blustery wet spring morning, a flag draped over it, while people in uniform stood stiffly next to the grave and saluted and little Stephanie fidgeted impatiently by her side, too young to understand…the incongruously cheerful sound of birds singing somewhere off in the trees (and she realizing how incongruous it was even at the time, and hating herself for noticing something like that at a time like this, no matter how ironic it was)…her thinking how much Steve would have hated having his coffin wrapped in a flag, how he would have disliked the solemnity of this whole ceremony, the priest droning pious platitudes about somebody he’d never met and how Steve was now going to walk with Jesus in A Better World…looking at her own mother beside her, leaning heavily on Uncle Henry’s arm, noticing with a shock how old and frail and tired she looked…. The photo that had stood on the mantelpiece in the living room as long as she could remember, her father in a World War II Army uniform, the father she’d never met, a black star on the glass frame, the photo gathering dust for years, never touched, never moved…. Her own daughter Stephanie, laughing and hugging her at the airport gate, kissing her husband and her baby goodbye, telling them that she’d send them all postcards and maybe some souvenirs if she could find a moment to steal from the sales conference, only minutes before her air-plane was blown to pieces in midair by a terrorist’s bomb…. The military jets screaming by outside, mean and black and predatory, on the way to the buildup for the next war, that would kill somebody else’s children….

  As though it were reading her mind—and who knew, perhaps it was—it said, The Mission will succeed, even though I failed. Eventually. They will send someone else. It may take another hundred years for them to get here, but eventually they will, and we’ll help you heal this world of yours. I have to believe that. Eventually, my failure won’t matter. The Mission will succeed.

  Another hundred years. How many children dead in that time, in how many wars?

  She heard the sound of a siren, a thin wail still far away, on the edge of hearing. The ambulance coming.

  Kill me, it said You have the right. I owe you that. I have nothing to pay with but my life.

  Suddenly, she was very, very tired, unutterably weary, as though the marrow in her bones had turned to lead.

  Hurry. They’re coming. Soon it will be too late. Kill me now. Don’t hesitate. I want you to do it. I don’t want to live. I can’t live with what I’ve done. It hurts too much.

  A kind of weary revulsion seized her then, a nauseated rejection of everything and everyone. She stared at the alien for another long moment. “Then live, God damn you,” she cried bitterly. “Live and be damned!”

  She flung the ax aside.

  Her legs gave out, and she sat down abruptly on the cold floor. If this was a trick, then it had won. She no longer even cared. Let it kill her if it wanted to.

  The wailing siren came closer a
nd closer, the sound cutting sharply through the cold winter air.

  One year later, on the anniversary of First Contact at Maple Hill Farm (as the scroll on the screen would say whenever they came back from the commercials), Alma Kingsley sat alone before the television set, listening to herself being praised on CNN. The commentators prattled on and on about the terrible tragedy of the Ambassador’s arrival, and of the even greater tragedy that would have occurred had it not been allowed to complete its Mission; one commentator, face radiating sincerity the way a pot-bellied stove radiates heat, spoke of Alma Kingsley as a secular saint for forgoing personal revenge for the Sake Of All Mankind.

  The Ambassador had tried to attend Jennifer and Desmond’s funerals (Candy was buried elsewhere), but she had refused to allow it to attend, to the disappointment of the newsmen, although they were there filming everything in sight anyway, keeping tight close-ups on her face as the last remnants of her family were lowered into the ground, not wanting to miss the slightest nuance of expression. Later, at the UN, the Ambassador had insisted on giving an emotional eulogy for the people he had inadvertently killed, going on to say that Alma Kingsley’s greatness of spirit, in being willing to forgive even the very creature who had killed her own granddaughter, all by itself was enough to prove that humanity was worthy of inclusion among the great interstellar Community of Races, and would insure their admission.

  Sometimes she wondered if the creature, who was certainly many times smarter than she or any other human being, had manipulated her psychologically into deciding not to kill it, using a sly variant of Br’er Rabbit’s “Don’t Throw Me In the Briar Patch!” routine to get her to act the way it wanted her to act. Certainly it had been easier for it to explain itself to the ambulance crew and the police with her there alive on the scene to vouch for it than it would have been if she were dead, and it was there alone to greet them with a houseful of murdered people at its back. And the forgiveness angle made for great press, just the spin to neutralize the unfortunate fact that the Ambassador had started its career on Earth by killing as many humans as possible. Or maybe it had been sincere. Certainly its people did seem to be highly ethical, concerned with Justice and Right Actions in a fussy, legalistic, rabbinical way that seemed almost prim. She would never know, one way or the other.