by Nancy Kress
“What progress have you made in identifying the genes and proteins involved?”
“We have the genes. Not yet how the proteins fold.”
She was intensely interested in this, plus the steps his team and other teams around the world were taking to discover more. It felt so good to be talking about science again, to be straining to follow a mind better than hers.
They talked for a long time. Harrison finished with, “Marianne, more good news—the mice are returning.”
“How? Where? What evidence? Or are you seeding immune specimens?”
He smiled at her eagerness, raised his hands palms up, let them drop in a gesture of humorous resignation. “Not our specimens, nor anybody else’s as far as we can tell. Which means that all our breeding programs were pointless. The returning mice developed immunity to R. sporii all on their own, or maybe a small number always had it and now they’re multiplying like—well, like mice. Mus musculus and P. maniculatus have each been captured in three states. Apparently nature will find a way.”
She heard an echo of Tim talking about grief softening over time: “It’s just life going on, you know?”
“I know,” she said.
“It’s all interconnected,” Harrison said, as if this were a new thought. Maybe, to a mind that focused with laser intensity on one scientific problem at a time, it was new. “The spores, the mice, the ecology, the children, and the solutions to all four.”
“I know,” she said again. “Stay in touch, Harrison. I’d like to know how your research is going.”
“Okay. Nice to see you again, Marianne.” He turned away.
* * *
Outside her building on the East Side, Marianne took out her key to open the vestibule door. A man came up behind her, spun her around, and shoved a gun into her chest.
“Don’t scream,” he said quietly, “or I’ll shoot.”
She glanced wildly around. No one on the street, although it was midmorning on a Tuesday. A wave of nausea swept up her throat; she fought it down and tried to think.
“Here, take my purse. I won’t say anything to anyone.”
He didn’t deign to answer this stupidity. Marianne studied him, memorizing what she could. He wore a ski mask—in September!—but she could see his eyes: deep brown. Pale thin lips, the bottom of a light-brown mustache. About two inches taller than she was, broad shoulders, thick neck, jeans and black leather boots and a light green nylon jacket zipped to the neck, clear latex gloves.
“I don’t want your purse,” he said. “I want you out of New York. Be gone by the end of the week, Marianne Elaine Jenner. You alien-loving motherfuckers have ruined this country and we don’t want you polluting this city.” He dropped something at her feet and ran.
Marianne fumbled with her key, dropped it, picked it up, shook as she put it in the lock. Only when she was inside did she realize she’d also picked up his dropped article. What if it was a bomb? No, it was just a thin piece of cloth, a patch of some sort. What if it was imbued with anthrax, or tularemia, or a genetically altered microorganism? But she’d already touched it, so she kept it in her fingertips as she ran up two flights of stairs, avoiding the elevator from some crazy fear that either it would harm her or the patch would harm it, to her apartment. She rang the bell with her other hand.
Tim flung open the door. “Marianne! What the fuck did you—What is it? What happened?”
She told him, her voice unsteady but her movements sure as she bagged the patch in a ziplock freezer bag and then washed her hands with a surgeon’s thoroughness.
Tim said, “Let me see that thing.”
She held it out to him. For the first time, she saw what it was: a crudely embroidered patch of a mouse face with huge bloody fangs and the letters EFHO.
“I know these clowns, Marianne. Earth for Humans Only. Strictly small-time bullies. If they have any fancy bioweapon things on this patch, then I’m the president of the United States.”
A relief. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. But what the hell were you doing outside without me? Or without your cell?”
“I forgot the cell. I needed to check something at the Museum of Natural History. Something not online.”
“I thought the museum was closed.”
“Not all of it. The research library is open.” This was true.
“You took a cab?”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t wait for me.” His blue eyes burned at her.
“I thought it was safe enough, midmorning and not that far away.”
“Uh-huh. But when he attacked you, there were no people close by.”
“No, Tim—I told you that. But it wasn’t an attack. He didn’t hurt me.”
“Just threatened your life. And he knew not only where you live but also your full name, even your middle name. Which wasn’t in the magazine article. How would he know it?”
“I don’t know—maybe he found it on the Internet.”
“But why use the whole name?”
“I don’t know! Tim, you’re missing the main point here!”
“I’m not missing anything.” Still his eyes trained on her face, as disconcerting as gun sights. “It’s just weird, is all.”
“Do you think I should call the police?” She’d hoped to fly under all official radar in New York, stealth-protected by Stubbins’s fake IDs and military-grade encryption programs for her computer and cell.
“No, no cops. They won’t do anything and they’ll blow your cover even more. Like I said, these are small-time bullies. What kind of gun?”
She had no idea. It might have been a realistic toy, for all she knew. She shook her head.
“From now on, you don’t go out without me. For now, come here.”
He put his arms around her. But she felt neither comfort nor desire, and that only made everything worse.
CHAPTER 19
S plus 6.2 years
Colin dreamed again about the square blue flowers. Jason was cutting them with the broken beer bottle and they were screaming at them from little mouths on the petals. Horrible! And then it was even worse because Daddy was lying deep underground where the plant Internet was and he was making noises, too. “What? What?” Colin and Jason said, because they couldn’t understand what Daddy was trying to say, but he just went on making those terrible noises and Colin woke up scared in the dark.
“Jason?”
But Jason wasn’t in his bed.
All at once the familiar morning sounds rushed into Colin’s mind: Jason and Grandma and Tim were in the kitchen, making breakfast. Grandma’s houseplants clicked in the living room; they needed watering. The building rumbled in its friendly morning way. From two stories up it was harder to hear the ground under the building, but it sounded normal, too. The screaming flowers were just a dream. Jason said dreams couldn’t hurt you.
But other things could.
When Tim left Colin and Jason at their school, Jason ran ahead to his second-grade room, where the teachers put him because he was so smart, shouting to some kids he knew. Colin was in the first grade because he was smart, too, and anyways all the kids in kindergarten either couldn’t hear anything or else took some drug that made them move really s-l-o-w. Colin hung back as long as he could but he had to go to his room, too, and then Paul would be waiting.
Colin knew that Mommy was dead and Daddy was in the hospital, but sometimes he pretended that Uncle Noah with his aliens had sneaked into the house and flown off with Mommy and Daddy. He knew that wasn’t really true, but it might have been because Uncle Noah was Daddy’s brother, and if Jason was dead or in the hospital, Colin would rescue him. But somehow Jason never seemed to see when Colin needed rescuing.
Paul Tyson was in third grade. His parents, he bragged on the playground, were very important. They had lots and lots of money. Paul always had the best tablet that played the best games, even if the teachers locked up all electronics in the safe except at lunchtime. Paul’s tablet even had
Ataka!, the really cool Russian videogame that everybody liked. It meant “Attack!”—they talked different in Russia. But Paul hated Uncle Noah’s aliens; he said bad words about them all the time. And he was a bully, a word Colin hadn’t even known until he started going to the Healy School.
Now Paul and two of his friends stood in the middle of the school lobby. Colin managed to get past them by walking close to a group of fifth-graders, the oldest kids in the school. They ignored him, but Colin knew from experience that at least one of them, a fierce girl with dreadlocks and shiny clothes, wouldn’t let anyone bully anyone else. It was her crusade. That was a word Grandma used a lot; she had a crusade, too.
Even so, Paul deliberately stepped hard on Colin’s foot. “Oops, so sorry,” he said, and the fierce girl glared at him. Paul scurried away. From the doorway of his classroom he smiled at Colin. Colin’s knees wobbled. How could a smile be so nasty?
First grade was easy, compared to all the stuff Grandma taught him and Jason. Sometimes Colin was bored. But today they were doing something exciting: drawing a zoo. Colin drew an elephant. He almost drew it in a basement, like in his favorite book, but probably zoos didn’t have basements.
Then, just as he was finishing the elephant’s ears, he had to go to the bathroom—really bad, and right now. Ms. Kellerman gave permission and Colin raced down the hall and into the boys’ bathroom. In the stall, he heard the bathroom door open, and when he came out, Paul was blocking the exit. “Hey, Colin Jenner.”
Colin froze. He made himself say, “My name is Colin Carpenter.”
“No, it’s not. And you didn’t find the tracker I put on you, did you? Feel around the back of your pants.”
By itself, like it wasn’t even part of him, Colin’s hand circled behind his body. The tracker was the size of a dime, stuck on the back of his jeans. He pulled it off and held it out to Paul. He didn’t know what else to do. Paul was so big—
The older boy hit him hard and fast, right in the stomach. Colin fell to the floor. Paul raised a foot and kicked Colin in the stomach with his boot.
“Your grandma is an alien-lover. You thought nobody knows about her and your family, right? Think again, fucker. Your grandma fucks Denebs and maybe you would, too, if the cowards ever came back here. Only they better not because my mom and dad would kill them all dead. You listening to me, you piece of shit? You—”
“What is going on here!”
Black boots, blue pant legs … security. Maybe the bathroom had a camera? Somehow Colin staggered to his feet while Paul said meekly, “Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing? You hit him!”
“I—” Paul didn’t seem to have any words. Paul! A third-grader!
Colin gasped, “He … did hit me. But it … it was my fault. I called him a name.” It took everything in him to keep his voice quiet, to act like his stomach didn’t burn and scream, to add in his grandmother’s tone, “It’s over now.” But he was not going to explain what Paul had said. Grandma and Tim had told Colin that nobody at the school must know Colin’s real last name or about Grandma’s crusade. They told Colin that over and over—but Paul knew! Colin was desperate that at least the security guard didn’t know, too.
The guard studied both boys. Finally he said, “See that it is over. Now go back to your classrooms.”
They did, but halfway down the hallway Paul turned to shout at the guard, “Cameras in the bathrooms are illegal! I’m telling my father about this!”
Colin slipped quietly into his classroom. His chest didn’t hurt much, but his stomach did. The drawing of the zoo was finished and people were cleaning up. Colin picked up his crayons, clutching them so hard that one snapped in two, sounding just like the pop! that plants made when they really, really needed watering.
* * *
Even if Marianne had continued with the Star Brotherhood Foundation, its major mission became pointless. The United States government formally discontinued work on the spaceship it had been building from the Deneb engineering plans. The ship, badly damaged by the superstorm three years ago, had been the center of political problems since its beginning. Now it became a casualty of budget shortfalls, congressional delay, party politics, and virulent opposition from the voting blocs that believed anything bequeathed by the aliens could only harm humanity. Some Americans still believed that the Denebs had caused the spore cloud; a larger percentage believed that the aliens knew the cloud would wipe out mice and had not told Terrans this.
“It’s so shortsighted!” Marianne raged to Tim as they watched the late-night news. “Christ, the statistics are right there! In seventy-five years—less if we keep going on the way we are—CO2 in the atmosphere will reach seven hundred parts per million. You’re looking at a devastating effect on the oceans, and possibly a near-total ecological collapse!”
“Uh,” Tim said. He lounged on the sofa beside her, a beer in his hand. When she glanced at him, he added, “But we have more private spaceships building, right? Besides Stubbins.”
“Yes.” He should know that already. Didn’t he ever follow the news?
Six years ago, everything known about space travel had become outdated. All the programs in development or nearing completion were suddenly horse-drawn barouches in a world of Ferraris. Space agencies in the US, in Russia and China and India and the European Union—all had gone into shock. Some had folded, some had stubbornly continued with “human” rocket plans, and some had fast-tracked the building of ships according to the alien plans. The EU, China, and Russia were building “Deneb” spaceships.
In the United States, the Boeing ship, half built, was stalled by fiscal problems.
SpaceX had thrown all of its resources behind a ship being built in California, now two-thirds done. Blue Origin was farther behind.
Sierra Nevada chose to continue with its old technology, on the reasonable grounds that it was comprehensible.
The newest company, Stubbins’s Starship Venture, was reported to have the ship closest to completion. Although since the reports issued from Stubbins’s PR machine and the site was closed to everyone else, it wasn’t known how true this was. Fantastic salaries and freedom from government politics had lured some of the best talent in the world to the Venture building site in Pennsylvania. As CEO of his perfume company, Stubbins had had the reputation of trusting the project heads he hired to get their goals met, without looking too closely into their methods. Stubbins’s word was always the final arbiter, but he listened more closely to his scientists than to his accountants, and that alone was such a novelty that he attracted people who otherwise might have shunned his unsavory reputation. If you were American and wanted to go to the stars, Jonah Stubbins looked like your best bet.
Not everybody wanted to go to the stars. The anchorwoman’s next story covered an ugly, violent protest in Pittsburgh, the closest big city to the Venture site. Citizens to Save Earth, yet another anti-alien group, smashed windows and burned cars. A dozen people were injured.
During the last year, public attitudes toward Stubbins’s ship seemed to have settled into an unexpected—by her, anyway—bimodal distribution. Marianne had expected a division along religious lines, since seven years ago the spore cloud had been demonized by fundamentalists as the End Times, or God’s cleansing, or one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (usually but not always Pestilence). She also expected that those who had lost family to R. sporii would most oppose the expedition to World. Certainly her experiences giving lectures had created that impression.
But lecture-goers, it turned out, were not a typical sample. The bimodal distribution was neither religious nor familial. It was economic.
Those who had recovered from the economic collapse, or whose jobs had never been cut by it, mostly approved of Stubbins’s private foray to the stars. They liked it because it was adventuresome, or because it wasn’t costing taxpayers anything, or because it might produce new technology or additional markets for Terran products. The second group, those hardest hit by the col
lapse, opposed Stubbins and thought the government should stop him. These people hated the aliens and wanted no more contact with them.
There was a third group, small but very vocal online, who both hated Denebs and wanted Stubbins to travel to World. They wanted revenge, to hit World as hard as the spore plague had hit Earth. In this they were closer to opinion dominant in Central Asia than to most of the United States.
Tim drained his beer. Marianne twisted her lips in disgust at the TV screen. “Look at them. The destructive idiots. They have no facts, but that doesn’t stop them.”
“Uh,” Tim said.
She turned to him. “Aren’t you at least a little bit interested in all this?”
He sat up straighter on the sofa. “You know I am.”
“Then why don’t you act like it?”
“Not everyone feels your need to spread emotion all over every last goal, Marianne. Some people just act.”
“Are you implying that I’m not acting enough?”
His eyes glittered. He crushed his beer can with one hand and thumped the can onto the coffee table. “When I came aboard the foundation it was because of Sissy, but I believed in it, too. In building the government ship. But that’s over now, and you’ve gone from giving speeches to just writing Internet stuff praising Stubbins.”
“It’s a different means to the same end.”
“Is it? Maybe. But just because I want us to go to the stars doesn’t mean I want Stubbins to take us there.” He stood and got another beer from the kitchenette.
By the time he’d returned, Marianne’s face was expressionless. She said, “The group at Columbia has isolated the genes that have been spore-activated and may cause the changes to the auditory parts of the brain.”
“Hey, great!”
He didn’t ask anything about the genes, or what the discovery might mean. Marianne knew she was testing him, and disliked herself for doing it, and did it anyway. “Also, there are verified reports now of mice in the wild that are immune to R. sporii.”
“So things are looking up? That’s good.”
