Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“People can really be stupid,” Lillie said in disgust. She and Keith sat on her dorm steps, shaded from the sultry July sun by a building overhang.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to see media stories.”

“Oh, they changed the rules a while ago. I guess they decided we weren’t going to get too scared or weird or something.”

“They were right,” Keith said. Lillie didn’t look scared or weird. She looked like a normal thirteen-year-old girl. That was what was scary and weird.

“But, you know, Uncle Keith, human people do all this stupid stuff, but pribir people don’t.”

Something inside Keith tightened. He was going to hear something important.

“That’s because the pribir people control their own genes. They made themselves work right, and they got rid of everything on their planet that could damage genes. Like nuclear reactors and chemicals and stuff.”

He said carefully, “They control all their own genes?”

“Yes. They go the right way, and that’s why they’re showing us how to control ours. We’re them, you know.”

“What do you mean, ‘We’re them’?”

“They have our DNA and stuff. They’re just humans who are way ahead of us on the right way.”

Humans. People. That’s why she had always, from the start, called them “people.”

He said, “Why didn’t you tell me—or anybody—this before? That the pribir are human beings far advanced in science?”

“I didn’t know it before,” she said, as if this should be obvious. She stood. “I’m sorry, I have to find Major Fenton. To tell her this stuff. The pribir need some things done.”

“Do you need paper?” Usually the first thing the children did was draw, then hand the drawings to what Keith suspected was a growing cadre of doctors, military intelligence, CIA, and State Department types.

“No, I don’t need to draw this. Just to say it. Bye, Uncle Keith, log you later.” She ran off across the grass, a long-legged hair-streaming figure somewhere between child and woman.

Keith remained sitting on the shaded steps, sniffing the air. It didn’t smell of anything.

After Lillie and the other children explained the “things the pribir need done,” the media stories changed again.

“Destroy all our nuclear power plants? Stop using that long list of chemicals in manufacturing?” Carlo demanded, on a visit to Theresa at Andrews. “Who the hell do they think they are?”

“They’re the pribir,” Theresa said witheringly. “I thought you at least knew that much.”

Relations between Theresa and her parents had deteriorated lately. Lillie had insisted that she and Keith accompany Theresa to this lunch at a base restaurant. “She shouldn’t have to deal with them all by herself,” was Lillie’s explanation, which made Keith uneasy. Was he, too, going to move from being Lillie’s confidante to being something distasteful to deal with?

Carlo said, “I don’t like your tone, young lady!”

“Well, I don’t like yours!” Theresa retorted. “The pribir are good people, better than us, and they want to help us on the right way!”

“Why? So we become weak in industry and military and they can take us over easier?”

“You don’t know anything, Dad!”

“You watch your mouth, Theresa Victoria Romero!”

Now Rosalita broke in with a long stream of Spanish. Keith, who spoke no Spanish, could nonetheless see that Rosalita’s rant was a mixture of anger and grief. Theresa folded her arms across her chest and listened in stony silence.

Lillie said carefully, “Mr. Romero, the pribir really are people. They have the same DNA as us, that’s how they know what to tell us to do with ours. And they just want us to protect it from the radiation and chemical stuff that damages it, so we can make ourselves strong in the right way.”

“So now foreign policy is being set by thirteen-year-olds,” Carlo sneered.

Keith said abruptly, “Lillie… when you say ‘the right way,’ is that capitalized?”

The others stared at him dumbly.

“I mean, is it like… like ‘The Path’ of Taoists? Is it a religion the pribir have?”

“No,” Lillie said.

“Yes,” Theresa said.

The girls looked at each other and broke out laughing. Finally Lillie said, “I guess it depends on the person. How you smell it.”

But Carlo had his justification. “A religious war. That fits. Weaken us industrially for a religious war. They had to come here for some goddamn reason.”

Theresa stood up so fast her chair clattered backwards. Other diners turned to look.

“You don’t know anything!” she yelled at her father, “And you don’t want to know! You’re ignorant and suspicious and… and… don’t come here anymore!”

In sudden tears, Theresa fled the restaurant. Rosalita started talking rapidly in Spanish to Carlo. Lillie turned apologetically to Keith. “I’m sorry but I have to go, Uncle Keith, she’s really upset.”

He nodded, and she hurried after Theresa. The three adults were left looking at their half-eaten dinners with nothing to say to each other.

He didn’t believe the pribir had come to Earth to wage a holy war. Neither could he quite share Lillie’s and Theresa’s—and all the other children’s—faith that the pribir were interstellar Florence Nightingales, here merely to relieve human suffering. He couldn’t forget that they had blown up SkyPower.

Nor could many others. Almost overnight the country erupted in violent groups at such cross-purposes that at times the pribir were reduced almost to irrelevancy, footnotes to pre-existing concerns.

Environmental groups, raging for years against nuclear plants and chemical dumps, gained new legitimacy: Even aliens know we’re damaging ourselves! Protests swelled. Protests became activism, and a factory that made tool-and-die equipment in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was bombed. Thirty-two people died.

Groups who had resented America’s slow, gradual powering-down of the defense budget seized on both the bombing and the pribir to scream for a military build-up.

Many religious leaders had always been uneasy with the pribir’s instructions for gene tampering. Because the engineering instructions had been aimed only at curing diseases, these conservative ministers and priests and rabbis and shaikhs had felt only limited support. It was difficult to persuade an American public that curing disease was against God’s wishes. And so far the pribir had not touched inheritable, germ-line genetic changes.

But now it was different. The aliens were preparing to force a new religion on us! All the so-called genetic gifts had merely been a softening up, the honeyed words dripping from the mouth of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. The pribir were indeed Satan!

Blow it out your ear, indignantly replied America’s liberal religious, backed by agnostics and atheists. You guys on the religious right are the ones using this to build your power base! You’d like to brainwash us all against the pribir for your own grandiose ends!

Sometimes it seems as if a religious war was going to occur without involving the pribir at all.

And then, on August 8, a day so hot and humid that after only five minutes outdoors Keith’s shirt stuck to both his chest and back, Lillie fired the opening shot of her personal war.

She’d been unusually quiet for a few days. Three days a week, Wednesday-Friday-Sunday, Keith took Lillie to lunch at the base’s best restaurant. He jeered at himself for the choice, knowing she’d have been just as happy with hamburgers, but the formal, adult atmosphere was obscurely necessary to Keith.

Lillie wore a pale blue lipstick, matching a dress he hadn’t seen before, bare legs, and high-heeled white sandals. Her hair had grown and she’d done it in a complicated arrangement of puffs and braids that he’d noticed on other teenage girls. Her round cheeks looked childlike beside the adult trappings. She ate with gusto, finishing everything, including most of Keith’s dessert.