Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Lisa watched the fight with sorrow, mingled with impatience. Why were these intelligent, capable men wasting time on turf wars? The greatest discovery in the history of the human race, and they used it to vent long-standing acrimonies, which was how it seemed to her. But maybe she wasn't seeing it too clearly. She was so tired. Being part of history might be exciting, but it was also so exhausting she was often afraid she'd fall asleep at the wheel driving home.

  And then one night, as she staggered in past midnight with the sleeping Carlo a dead weight in her arms, Danilo was back.

  "Lissy," he said somberly, and she couldn't summon the energy to tell him he wasn't allowed to call her that.

  "Leave, Danilo."

  "I'm going. This is a two-minute visit. Do you often work at night like this?"

  "If I have to." She dumped Carlo in his bed, covered him, and closed the bedroom door.

  Danilo said, "And do you often get to work as early as you did today? I was here at five and you were already gone."

  "What were you doing here at five? Danilo, leave. I'm exhausted." She yawned.

  "I can see that. Do you often get to work as early as you did today?"

  This time she heard the casualness in his voice. Too casual. Her senses sharpened. "Why?"

  "Just asking."

  "No, you're not."

  He picked up his ever-present knapsack and headed for the door. "Lissy, you work too hard. Don't go into work so early."

  "The hell with you. How else do you suppose work gets done, Danilo? Not that you'd know."

  He didn't change expression. "I know you hate me."

  "No, Danilo. I don't hate you. I can even admire what you're doing, or at least I could when you were with organizations like Greenpeace. It's necessary, important work. But it's not supposed to be an excuse to avoid normal human responsibilities such as your own child, and then even expect to get credit for doing that."

  "I wanted you to put him in an institution, Lisa."

  "And I chose not to. Is that it, is the problem that Carlo's deformed? That the healthy Danilo Aglipay, stalwart macho crusader, has a son who will never walk or feed himself? Do you think that my keeping him against your wishes absolves you of responsibility? Whether you approve or not, the kid is here, and he's yours, and you'd rather be Richard the Lion Heart than St. Francis of Assisi. Fine. Just don't expect me, of all people, to applaud you for it."

  He didn't answer. Danilo not insisting on the last word was such a novel phenomenon that, watching the door close behind him, she would have felt triumph if she hadn't felt so exhausted. She collapsed into bed and slept, dreamless.

  · · · · ·

  The next morning she was late. Lisa overslept, Carlo was in a rare terrible mood, Mrs. Belling had to run errands before she could take him. Lisa didn't get to Kenton until after ten, and it was clear that something big had gone down before she got there.

  "Stephanie, what—"

  "Not now. I have to write this report."

  Stephanie never rebuffed her. Lisa was afraid to even approach Paul, who stalked tight-lipped through the corridors, looking to neither side.

  Hal was on the dock, pushing off in the boat. Blunt, honest Hal. Lisa flew out the back door and down the dock. "Hal! Take me with you!"

  "No." Then he saw her face. "Oh, all right, but don't talk to me. Just take this and count." He thrust a clipboard at her with columns headed with the names of various fishes. Most of the boat was taken up with netting. Lisa understood; Hal was sampling the fish population in various parts of the Preserve to determine any changes from baseline since the alien animals appeared. The staff had already established that the post-snakers would eat fish. Meekly, Lisa settled herself in the boat.

  It was peaceful away from the research complex. Hal poled the boat past mixed stands of cattails and hard-stem bulrushes, around impenetrable stands of purple loosestrife. A wood duck had nested on a wind-throw mound and Lisa watched the ducklings slide into the water after their mother. A tern perched on top of an abandoned muskrat house. As the boat glided along, frogs splashed from hummocks into the muddy water, croaking indignantly.

  She waited until they were far enough out that Hal wouldn't turn back. With Hal it was always best to be direct and brief. "Hal, I wasn't here this morning. Something happened. Please tell me."

  "Politics happened. Fear happened. Stupidity happened. The Washington guy made a report."

  "And …"

  "They don't know down there what to do with the alien animals. But they don't like the speed with which they're both evolving and reproducing. Washington in its cover-your-ass indecision listed several courses of action they might take. One of them was to eliminate the threat entirely."

  Lisa suddenly could feel her heartbeat in her teeth. " 'Threat'? 'Eliminate'?"

  "You got it. As in, 'Too many unknowns in allowing unknown organisms to propagate in human environments, with totally unknown effects.' As in, 'Kill them all.' "

  "But … how …"

  "Undecided, of course. Probably poison the entire ecosystem, before the Monsters from Outer Space spread too far. God, you'd think all these guys do is watch B-movies on late-night TV. No wonder nobody's actually governing the country."

  "But—"

  "No, there's nothing Kenton can do. Haven't you learned yet that science is mostly just the slave of politics and industry? It wasn't once, but it is now. Grow up, girl."

  "I don't—"

  "Shut up, Lisa. I told you could only come if you shut up. Just count."

  Expertly he cast another net, then raised its stiff perimeters high enough in the water to see its thrashing occupants. Lisa counted.

  They stayed out till mid-afternoon. Hal said not a single word more. Lisa followed suit. Just before they reached shore, a group of post-snakers swam past them, climbed onto a hummock, and disappeared into the trees. They reminded her of pioneers rolling westward, sturdy and purposeful. Cattails whispered softly, and her face was reflected in the calm golden water.

  · · · · ·

  Carlo was still fussy when Lisa picked him up. She fed him dinner, tried to play with him. But his usually sunny nature was in eclipse, and his forehead felt warm.

  "Oh, sweetie, don't get sick now. Not now, honey!"

  He whimpered, lolling heavily against her breast. She put him to bed with baby aspirin. He breathed easily, not congested. It was nothing; kids got minor infections all the time, and threw them off just as quickly. Carlo had done it before.

  Lisa went into the kitchenette and washed three days' accumulation of dishes. It was only nine o'clock, and she had overslept that morning, but she was running a sleep deficit. Ten hours of unconsciousness suddenly seemed to her the most tantalizing idea she'd ever had. She drew the blinds, put on her pajamas, and hauled open the sofabed.

  An envelope was taped to the center of the mattress. LISA AGLIPAY.

  She had never been Lisa Aglipay, never married Danilo, never used his name. She opened the envelope. A single line of type: "Don't go into work so early, Lisa."

  She stood very still. EarthAction. Suspected in half a dozen environmental bombings. A pesticide factory in Mexico, a supermarket in Germany that refused to remove genetically modified foods from its shelves … "Worse, nobody knows the long-term effects of introducing organisms into the environment that didn't develop there naturally.…"

  No. Kenton was a wildlife preserve. A research facility for pure science, not an industrial lab. And there was no way EarthAction could know about the alien animals. Danilo was just trying to do what he had always done, control her through scaring her. He wanted the last word.

  The young soldiers, going in and out of Flaherty's bar in town, more of them all the time as security was increased and then increased again. Were they all as stupid as the scientists thought? As much unthinking robots as the military thought? Danilo could have talked to any of them. Danilo was good at talking.

  No.

  She crumpled the piece of
paper in her hand and threw it at the wall. In the other room, Carlo coughed. Lisa, hands shaking, put on the TV to distract herself.

  "… earlier. The truck was found abandoned near Douglas, Arizona, the site of major and continual border skirmishes between local ranchers and illegal aliens from Mexico crossing into the United States. United States Border Patrol agents found the windowless truck locked from the outside. Inside were the bodies of thirty-two Mexican men, women, and children, dead of heat and dehydration. A spokesperson for the Border Patrol said it is not uncommon for Mexican citizens to pay large sums of money for transport into the United States and then be cheated by receiving no transport. However, this tragedy …"

  The visuals were horrendous. Lisa turned off the television.

  Don't go into work so early, Lisa.

  She dressed swiftly, checked on Carlo, and left him heavily asleep. She had never left him alone before, but it wasn't, she thought grimly, as if he were going to wander out into the street. Carlo was never going to wander anywhere without help.

  It started to rain, first lightly, and then a hard driving torrent. The roads were shiny and slick. At Kenton she pulled out her ID for the guard, who came out of his tiny shanty wrapped in a bright yellow poncho. She looked at him hard. He looked like all the others.

  "Lisa," Stephanie said somberly in the main lab, "back to work more? What about your son?"

  It was the first time Stephanie had ever asked. Lisa said, "He's visiting my mother."

  "Good timing, given the workload here," Stephanie said.

  "Yes. Who else is in?"

  "Nobody. Even Paul went home to see his kids for a change, mirabile dictu."

  How long would Stephanie stay? No way to tell. Lisa set to work on some water samples.

  Stephanie left at midnight. "You know the locking codes, Lisa?"

  "Of course."

  Five minutes, seven. Stephanie wasn't coming back. Lisa punched in the codes for the back door. Heavily laden, she made her way along the dock in the dark. A cool wind blew the rain against her body. In a few minutes her jeans and sweater were soaked.

  She turned on her huge flashlight, set it at the end of the dock, and untied the boat. Pushing off from the dock, she rowed into the swamp, but not very far; she wasn't that good a boatman. It didn't have to be far. A little ways out lay a half-submerged fallen tree. Its branches encircled a sort of pond-within-the-swamp, rich with algae and the chemicals of decay, exactly what the scientists had determined to be primary breeding grounds. Once there, Lisa leaned over the side of the boat and filled all the plastic containers she'd brought from her apartment. Two empty margarine tubs. Two pieces of Mrs. Belling's Tupperware. A milk jug she'd hastily emptied. A covered pail that had come full of oversized crayons Danny could grasp with his toes. A gallon ice cream container. All of them, tightly lidded, just fit into her canvas gym bag.

  The flashlight guided her back to the dock. Only half an hour had elapsed. Ten minutes more and she'd have Kenton locked, the gym bag in the car, herself driving out past the Army's "perimeter."

  When would they detonate a bomb? Probably not for hours yet, just before dawn.

  Don't go into work so early, Lisa.

  Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe EarthAction would do nothing. Maybe it would be the government. Hal, grim in the flat-bottomed boat among the peaceful reeds and rushes. Probably poison the entire ecosystem … "Too many unknowns in allowing unknown organisms to propagate in human environments, with totally unknown effects."

  She wondered if Danilo would have found it funny that Washington and EarthAction actually agreed. Probably not.

  She drove carefully through the rain, aware of her cargo. The microorganisms wouldn't last too long in those closed containers; they had evolved (so rapidly!) in sunlight. Tomorrow she would call in sick, bundle Carlo into the back seat, drive like hell. Where? Not all in one place. Better to diversify.

  There were freshwater wetlands on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains, five hours' drive to the south. Wetlands in Maryland, the huge Dismal Swamp in Virginia. In West Virginia there were places so remote the post-snakers might not be discovered for years. And the post-post-snakers, and whatever came after that. Twelve hours' drive. Maybe Carlo would sleep a lot of the way.

  Danilo, Hal, Washington … they were all wrong. It wasn't about what humans were doing to the environment, terrible as that was. Concentrating on the rain-slicked road, what Lisa saw reflected in its shiny surface wasn't deforestation or global warming. It was a garbage dump in Manila, crashing down in all its sickening rottenness to bury and burn ninety-six people who had nowhere else to live. A locked truck where human beings left thirty-two men, women, and children to die slowly and horribly. The factory in her childhood home, pumping sludge into the groundwater even after scientific studies had linked that water to cancers and birth defects. Carlo, one of those birth defects but also a happy and precious child, from whom Danilo had walked away with as little sense of responsibility as if Carlo had been an organically grown vegetable that had nonetheless developed an inexplicable blight. The images scalded her. Why didn't they maim everyone else as well?

  Somehow, for some reason, they didn't. So they happened again and again and again.

  It isn't, she thought slowly and painfully, what humans do to the Earth. It's what we do, have done, will do to each other. Maybe the aliens, when they were done evolving into whatever they had been designed to become, would do better. It seemed to her they could hardly do worse.

  She wondered what they would be like.

  The Most Famous Little Girl in the World, by Nancy Kress

  The most famous little girl in the world stuck out her tongue at me. "These are all my Barbie dolls and you can't use them!"

  I ran to Mommy. "Kyra won't share!"

  "Kyra, dear," Aunt Julie said in that funny tight voice she had ever since IT happened, "share your new dolls with Amy."

  "No, they're mine!" Kyra said. "The news people gave them all to me!" She tried to hold all the Barbie dolls, nine or ten, in her arms all at once, and then she started to cry.

  She does that a lot now.

  "Julie," Mommy said, real quiet, "she doesn't have to share."

  "Yes, she does. Just because she's now some sort of … oh, God, I wish none of this had happened!" Then Aunt Julie was crying, too.

  Grown ups aren't supposed to cry. I looked at Aunt Julie, and then at stupid Kyra, still bawling, and then at Aunt Julie again. Nothing was right.

  Mommy took me by the hand, led me into the kitchen, and sat me on her lap. The kitchen was all warm and there were chocolate-chip cookies baking, so that was good. "Amy," Mommy said, "I want to talk to you."

  "I'm too big to sit on your lap," I said.

  "No, you're not," Mommy said, and held me closer, and I felt better. "But you are big enough to understand what happened to Kyra."

  "Kyra says she doesn't understand it!"

  "Well, in one sense that's true," Mommy said. "But you understand some of it, anyway. You know that Kyra and you were in the cow field, and a big spaceship came down."

  "Can I have a cookie?"

  "They're not done yet. Sit still and listen, Amy."

  I said, "I know all this! The ship came down, and the door opened, and Kyra went in and I was far away and I didn't." And then I called Mommy on the cell phone and she called 911 and people came running. Not Aunt Julie—Mommy was baby-sitting Kyra at Kyra's house. But police cars and firemen and ambulances. The cars drove right into the cow field, right through cow poop. If the cows hadn't been all bunched together way over by the fence, I bet the cars would have driven through the cows, too. That would have been kind of cool.

  Kyra was in there a long time. The police shouted at the little spaceship, but it didn't open up or anything. I was watching from an upstairs window, where Mommy made me go, through Uncle John's binoculars. A helicopter came but before it could do anything, the spaceship door opened and Kyra walked out and policemen rushed
forward and grabbed her. And then the spaceship just rose up and went away, passing the helicopter, and ever since everybody thinks Kyra is the coolest thing in the world. Well, I don't.

  "I hate her, Mommy."

  "No, you don't. But Kyra is getting all the attention and—" She sighed and held me tighter. It was nice, even though I'm too big to be held tight like that.

  "Is Kyra going to go on TV?"

  "No. Aunt Julie and I agreed to keep both of you off TV and magazines and whatever."

  "Kyra's been on lots of magazines."

  "Not by choice."

  "Mommy," I said, because it was safe sitting there on her lap and the cookies smelled good, "what did Kyra do in the spaceship?"

  Her chest got stiff. "We don't know. Kyra can't remember. Unless … unless she told you something, Amy?"

  "She says she can't remember."

  I twisted to look at Mommy's face. "So how come they still send presents? It was last year!"

  "I know." Mommy put me on the floor and opened the oven to poke at the cookies. They smelled wonderful.

  "And," I demanded, "how come Uncle John doesn't come home anymore?"

  Mommy bit her lip. "Would you like a cookie, Amy?"

  "Yes. How come?"

  "Sometimes people just—"

  "Are Aunt Julie and Uncle John getting a divorce? Because of Kyra?"

  "No. Kyra is not responsible here, and you just remember that, young lady! I don't want you making her feel more confused than she is!"

  I ate my cookie. Kyra wasn't confused. She was a cry-baby and a Barbie hog and I hated her. I didn't want her to be my cousin anymore.

  What was so great about going into some stupid spaceship, anyway? Nothing. She couldn't even remember anything about it!

  Mommy put her hands over her face.

  · · · · ·

  2008

  Whispers broke out all over the cafeteria. "That's her … her … her!"

  Oh, shit. I bent my head over my milk. Last year the cafeteria used to serve fizzies and Coke and there were vending machines with candy and chips, but the new principal took all that out. He's a real bastard. Part of the "Clean Up America" campaign our new president is forcing down our throats, Dad said. Only he didn't say "forcing" because he thinks it's cool, like all the Carter Falls High parents do. Supervision for kids. School uniforms. Silent prayer. A mandatory class in citizenship. Getting expelled for everything short of breathing. It all sucks.