Nancy Kress - After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

There were more tents, plus a lot of rope, a sharp “axe” that McAllister immediately took away someplace, and many metal things Pete didn’t understand the use of. McAllister directed it all to be stowed back on the rolling cart—no playing with this one—and pulled into the room next to the gerbils.

But the most interesting thing, McAllister didn’t see at all. Ravi said quietly to Pete, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

“I can’t leave the Grab room. I’m next.” Pete already wore the wrister.

“Then wait until everybody leaves.”

Pete nodded, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to see anything from Ravi. Pete regarded it as a private triumph that when he masturbated he no longer thought of McAllister; now he imagined the beautiful red-haired girl that had been Susie’s big sister. He’d already calculated how many years before Susie herself would be ready for sex. Still, every time he saw the growing curve of McAllister’s belly, the old animosity toward Ravi stirred.

At the same time, he and Ravi were now allies. Together they were going to get revenge for Earth. The first Tesslie they saw—and one had to show up eventually, after all he’d seen one when he’d gone Outside!—they were going to kill. They spent a lot of time in Pete’s clear-walled secret room, gazing out at the growing grasses in the black rock and planning ways to accomplish this. If the Tesslie was an alien inside a bucket-case they could hit the case with something until it cracked open, drag the alien out, and stomp on it. If it was a robot, they would find the batteries and pull them out.

“Look,” Ravi said when everyone else had left the Grab room. He reached under his tunic, made from a thick blanket folded and sewn to create pockets. Ravi pulled out something encased in leather. The leather slipped off and there was the knife, long and gleaming and, Pete knew without testing it, really sharp. Then another one.

“They had a lot of knives in the store and I put some on the rolling cart. But these two are for us.”

“Yes,” Pete said. He took one. Just holding it made him feel strange: powerful and bad, both. But he liked the feeling.

“Yes,” he said again.

Julie tried to be at running and hiding, but most of the time she felt like a fool. After all, she didn’t even know if whichever agency had arrested Fanshaw would come for her. And what if they did? All she had done was work on data he had given her.

Data that she knew had been obtained illegally, which made her at the very least an accessory to crime. Data that might, in fact, constitute a terrorist risk.

So why hadn’t she reported Fanshaw? Because he must have gotten the data from some government agency, which meant they were already aware of the threat. She couldn’t have helped any, and she might have endangered herself. Material witnesses could be detained by the FBI or CIA indefinitely, in secret and without filed charges. If that had happened, who would have cared for Alicia? Linda had her hands full with her job and her own family; Jake was out of the question.

It was because of Alicia that Julie was trying to plan responsibly now. At first light she packed the car carefully. She stopped at the bank as soon as it opened and withdrew $3,000 in cash. She turned off her cell phone. Then she drove north from D.C. on I-270. In Pennsylvania, just over the border from Maryland, she found a seedy motel that looked like it would accept cash. It did. The bored clerk behind a shield of bullet-proof glass didn’t check the parking lot to see if the false license number she put down matched the one on her car. If the clerk was surprised to see a woman with a baby walk in to his establishment, which usually catered to an entirely different sort of trade, he didn’t show it.

Locking the motel door behind her, Julie had a moment of panic. What was she doing? Her life had been going so well, had felt so sweet—

She was doing what she had to do.

After feeding Alicia, Julie drove to the nearest library and used their Internet connection until the library closed. It helped that Alicia, an unusually good baby now that the first bouts of colic were over, slept peacefully in her infant seat or stared calmly at whatever crossed her vision. Back in her motel room, Julie worked on her own laptop, which couldn’t have accessed the Internet if she’d wanted to; this was not the sort of place with Wi-Fi.

When she couldn’t go any further with the data she had, she watched the TV. It only got three channels, but that was enough. Through the thin walls came first loud music and then louder laughter, followed by a lot of sexual moaning. Sleep came late and hard. Julie upped the volume on the TV, flipping channels to find what she sought.

“Dead zones” were increasing in the world’s oceans. No fish, no algae, no life.

The Nile was threatened by industrial pollution. No fish, no algae, no life.

CO 2levels in the atmosphere were creeping upward.

Overfishing was causing starvation in Southeast Asian islands.

The noise from adjoining rooms grew louder. A door slammed, hard. Julie’s gun, a snub-nosed .38, lay on the floor beside her bed. Julie was licensed to carry, and a reasonably good shot. She didn’t expect to have to use the gun, but it was comforting to know she had it.

Pete sat in the Grab room, waiting for the platform to brighten. He had been there each day for a week now, relieved from duty only to sleep, and he was terrifically bored. Darlene had brought him onions and peppers to slice and chop. Eduardo had brought him sewing. Tommy popped in and out, too restless to stay very long. Caity had strolled in, nonchalantly offering sex, and had stalked out, her back stiff, when Pete said no. Jenna brought Petra, both of them trundled in on the rolling cart by Terrell. Petra was just learning to walk. Pete and Jenna sat a few paces apart and set the baby to waddling happily between them until she got tired and went to sleep.

But most of the time he was bored. Of the Shell’s six books, two of them too hard for Pete, and he’d read the others over and over. He knew all about the Cat in the Hat, the fairy tales with all the princes and horses and swords, the moon you said good-night to, and Animals in the Friendly Zoo . Why didn’t the fucking Grab machinery brighten?

It was a relief of sorts to think bad words, so he said them again, this time aloud. “Why doesn’t the fucking Grab machinery brighten?”

“Language, Pete,” McAllister said. She smiled at him from the doorway, walked heavily to his side, and braced one hand on the wall to lower herself beside him. Pete blushed, then scowled, conscious of the forbidden knife under his shirt. He had sounded out the words on its sheath: CAUTION: Carlton Hunting Knife. Very Sharp.

“I came to keep you company,” McAllister said. “Are you very bored?”

“Yes.”

“You’re doing a good job. You always do.”

Pete looked away. He used to love McAllister’s praise, used to practically live for it. Now, however, he wondered if she really meant it, or if she just wanted him to keep on doing what she wished. Did she praise all the Six the same way? And the older Grab kids, too?

McAllister watched him carefully. Finally she said, “You’re growing up, Pete.”

“I am grown up! I’m fifteen!”

“So you are.”

Silence, which lengthened until Pete felt he had to say something. “How is the fetus?”

To his surprise, McAllister smiled, and the smile had a tinge of sadness in it. “Doing fine. Do you know how odd it would have been for a fifteen-year-old to utter that sentence, in Before?”

He didn’t know. He said belligerently, “I don’t see why. That fetus is important to us.”