Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

The president essentially said that everything was unknown at this time.

Lillie was sleepy by the time they were bussed back to their temporary housing. Neither she nor Theresa would say much about their briefing.

“What did they ask you?” Carlo Romero said.

Theresa said, “Oh, you know, who the pribir are and why they’re here.”

“Who are they and why are they here?”

Lillie spoke as if the answer should be obvious but she was being polite anyway. “They’re people from another star system who are here to help us with our genes.”

“By blowing us up?”

To Keith’s surprise, both Lillie’s and Theresa’s eyes filled with tears. Theresa said, “They didn’t want to do that. But you guys wouldn’t listen and get the people off! And the genetic good of everybody is more important than a few lives.”

Lillie nodded. Keith felt suddenly chilled. He had a sudden vivid memory: Lillie at ten years old, sitting with him under a tree while patriotic fireworks exploded overhead:

“Uncle Keith, you said that two people died on your energy case… Was it worth it? Two people dead, and everybody else gets lots of energy?”

“We don’t look at it like that. Although unfortunately new technologies always seem to cost lives at first. Railroads, air travel, heart transplants, probably even the first discovery of fire.”

“I think two deaths is worth it.”

Was that Lillie saying now that the pribir were justified in blowing up SkyPower, or was it the pribir?

Was Lillie herself still in there somewhere?

“Good night, Uncle Keith. Mr. Romero, Mrs. Romero.”

“Good night, honey.”

The three adults looked at each other. Carlo said suddenly, fiercely, “She’s still our daughter!”

Keith nodded. To his own surprise, the nod was genuine. She was still Lillie. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

And he would do anything to keep her safe.

Life settled, incredibly, into a routine. A schedule was set up for the kids to meet, separately, with both doctors and politicians/military types. Between appointments, youth counselors organized basketball tournaments, library trips, educational software, video-games contests, movies, dances. No child ever left the base and no child was ever unaccompanied outside of the temporary-housing area. The parents went places with their kids, vaguely embarrassing and unwanted presences on the sidelines, or met with “counselors” that Keith suspected were CIA agents.

There was talk of organizing a proper school, but the kids spanned three different grades and forty school systems. Also, no one wanted to admit they would be here long enough to create a separate school. Schooling on base along with the resident “military brats” was not even mentioned.

The pribir did not choose to communicate anything.

The president did not try to shoot down the alien spaceship, assuming that was possible.

Lillie reported to Keith that there was this boy she sort of liked, Alex, and he told his friend Sean who told Donald who told Theresa that Alex sort of liked Lillie, too, but Lillie didn’t know that for sure and did Uncle Keith think she should ask him to dance on Friday night or would she look like a fungal bonus?

Hysteria, fanned by the press, mounted throughout the country.

An additional Army unit appeared on base, which now had a totally sealed perimeter.

The pribir did not choose to communicate anything.

Lillie said she was missing too much algebra and would get too far behind and so would Uncle Keith download an algebra program for her at the library, since no kids were allowed at the terminals?

Keith realized the children were not allowed on the Net to protect them from the hate screeds he found there daily.

Theresa broke her thumb bowling and was treated at Malcolm Grow, where medical tests on the kids had shown nothing different from what all the medical tests elsewhere had shown.

The pribir did not choose to communicate anything.

And then, ten days later, they did, and everything changed again.

“I need a big piece of paper,” Lillie said, coming inside their temporary housing with a bag of corn chips. PX privileges had been extended to the base visitors.

“Do we have any big sheets of paper?” Theresa asked, bursting in the other door.

Keith and Carlo, who had been using handhelds in vain attempts to do their respective jobs from hundreds of miles away, looked at each other. Rosalita was out shopping.

“Oh, there’s this shelf paper your mother bought,” Lillie said, rummaging in a kitchen cupboard. “Here, Tess.”

Both girls efficiently cleared the bungalow’s one table, spread out a hunk of white shelf paper, and began to draw. Keith and Carlo rose at the same time to stand beside them. After a few minutes of silence, Keith risked, “Is what you’re both drawing a message from the pribir?”

“Yes,” Lillie answered. “Do we have any other color pens besides blue?”

Carlo said, “Do you… do you want to use the handheld?”

“No, thanks, Dad,” Theresa said. “This is better.”

Why? Keith wondered but didn’t ask. He found he was holding his breath as he watched the girls draw. They both drew the same thing, although it was obvious that Theresa was the better artist. Lillie’s drawing was fairly crude: a human eye. Then she drew a mouse and heavily circled its eye. Then some sort of flying insect, with its eye circled. Underneath she put four symbols: a circle, a square, a triangle, and a short straight line. Then she began to rapidly write a whole string of these, as if they were an alphabet.

When she was done, she stood and stretched. “Tess, want some corn chips?”

“Sure, just a minute, I’m not quite done.” Carlo said, “Theresa, what… what are you going to do with that?”

“Take it to Major Fenton. She’s leading my group.”

“Do you like her?” Lillie asked.

“She’s okay. A little staff-assed.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. But she’s okay.”

Keith said, “Do you want me to call her? To give her this… thing?”

“No, I’ll take it when I have my appointment this afternoon,” Lillie said. “But thanks anyway, Uncle Keith. C’mon, Tess, let’s eat these chips on the way to basketball.”

The girls left the men staring at each other blankly.

“The decision has been made,” said a female major—yet someone else Keith hadn’t met yet, this project had more personnel than an aircraft carrier—“to pass on to you parents everything we learn about the children’s messages from the pribir.”

Eighty-three parents sat again in a room at the Officer’s Club. Keith counted; evidently seven had gone home. Probably they were from two-parent sets, with other children or critical jobs to see to. He had a critical job, too, and it was going down the toilet, but he couldn’t leave.

“We recognize the dangers in this open communication, and hope you do as well,” the major continued. “It’s much better for everyone if the press receives its information through official government channels, to guarantee both accuracy and security. On the other hand, these are your children.” She smiled. The smile came out a bit thin.

She started reading from a prepared statement. “This morning all sixty children produced the same drawing, in most cases immediately after being outdoors. Each child told his or her counselor that the pribir wished to help us with our genes. The four symbols, as you probably guessed—circle, square, triangle, line—correspond to the four bases of DNA, adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine. The long string of symbols matches the gene that creates the eye in a developing human fetus. Its base sequence is very close to the sequence for the eye gene in mice and fruit flies.”