Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

Keith didn’t believe it.

Lillie sat on her bed at Quantico, fresh from another session with her grief counselor. No barracklike dorms here; each child had a separate room. Some kind adult had tried to make them inviting. Lillie’s bed was covered with a red blanket, and a vase of flowers sat on the bureau.

“Uncle Keith, I have to say something.”

“What, honey?”

“I want to go up to the pribir ship. I’ll be safe there.” He looked at her hopelessly.

“I told Major Fenton. I told everybody. We’re going. Not all of us, some people want to stay here.”

“The government won’t let you go. Now more than ever.”

“We’re going. But I need to tell you something first. This is necessary sometime, even if it isn’t the right way. Genes are the right way.”

“What’s necessary sometimes? What are you talking about?”

She got off her bed, walked to his chair, and awkwardly kissed the top of his head. It had been nearly a year since Lillie had permitted physical contact; he held her gratefully.

“I love you, Uncle Keith.”

“I love you, too.”

She moved away from him and pulled something from under her top. A cheap locket on a long chain. Flipping it open, he saw that the two portrait hollows held tiny pictures of him and Barbara, both portraits at least fifteen years old. Barbara smiled radiantly. Keith looked solemn and impressive, still with all his hair. He couldn’t remember ever looking that young.

Lillie closed the locket and put it back under her top. All she said was, “They keep the air conditioning too high here, don’t you think? Everybody opens the windows at night to let heat in.”

He nodded, and the moment was over.

When he woke in his room at the Quantico visitors’ center the next morning, he was surprised to see how bright out it was. Nine o’clock—he never slept that late! Standing, he was surprised to find himself staggering a little. Quickly he dressed to meet Lillie for breakfast.

She was gone. Twenty of them were gone. Overnight, they had vanished from the middle of Quantico while surrounded by marines, FBI agents, and military police. “They made you fall asleep, and us, too,” the remaining twenty-five children explained, over and over. “Everybody around here. With the smell we breathed in. Then the pribir sent another smell to wake us kids up, and they took the ones who wanted to go. It was the right way.”

It wasn’t possible, screamed everything from White House staff to barstool commentators. No trace of sedative was found in the bloodstream of anyone at Quantico. No ship or shuttle or anything irregular had been detected coming in from space, or launching up from Earth. Not by any facility anywhere in the world. Something else must have happened, with or without the complicity of the government. Those children had been taken somewhere by ground, and had been… what?

Deprogrammed.

Murdered.

Secured somewhere really safe.

Sent on one of our shuttles to the still uncompleted International Space Station. Cloned.

Brought to NORAD, under Cheyenne Mountain, where they wouldn’t be able to “smell” anything.

Genetically “restored.”

Experimented on.

“They made you fall asleep, and us, too,” the remaining twenty-five children went on repeating. “But it’s okay now. The kids are all with the pribir now. They’re fine. From now on, they’ll just do the right way.”

Keith believed the children. On the evidence, or because he wished to? No way to know.

He wasn’t permitted to leave Quantico; from the intensity of questioning going on, it seemed as if no one might ever leave Quantico again. But he was at least allowed outside. That night he stood in the shadow of the dining hall and gazed upward.

The sky, clear, glittered with thousands of stars, although the lights of Quantico dimmed them slightly. The moon was at the quarter. He didn’t know enough to tell if it was first quarter or last.

How did you do it? How did anyone do it? Fathers had once sent twelve-year-old sons as midshipmen on three-year sea voyages. Princesses had been sent at fourteen, or twelve, or ten, across oceans to marry distant princes, their parents knowing they would never see their daughters again. Countless mothers had sent young sons to war. In 1914 half the youth of Europe had been sent to die in trenches full of mud. Kids Lillie’s age had made up the shameful, futile Children’s Crusade. As recently as a century and a half ago, Irish and German and Italian children had emigrated, alone, to America’s lush promise. All voluntarily sent away from their homes.

How did any of the parents do it? Lillie wasn’t even his child, and yet he felt as if some necessary organ had been ripped from his body. Lung, liver, bowels.

Heart.

“ We’re going. But I need to tell you something first. This is necessary sometime, even if it isn’t the right way. Genes are the right way.”

There was no right way for this.

He stood there a long time, staring at the sky, until a young MP, very nervous that nothing questionable should happen on his watch, told Keith to move along.

Uncle Keith didn’t understand. He never had, much as he loved her. No one had ever understood her, and Lillie had grown used to that, but still her heart beat faster as she crept along the corridor of the dormitory at Quantico. But the pribir would be different.

“Tess?” she whispered in Theresa’s doorway, although there was no need to whisper, “Are you with us or not?”

Theresa materialized from the bed. Her face, surrounded by wild masses of black hair, looked scared. “I… I still don’t know.”

“You have to decide,” Lillie said relentlessly. Then, because she knew how scared Theresa was, she added in a softer tone, “You don’t have to come, you know. It’s all right to stay. The pribir might need people here, too.”

Theresa gave a strangled little laugh. “I’m afraid to stay here, too.”

“Well, you have to do one or the other.”

“I’ll… I’ll come.”

She grabbed Lillie’s hand. Theresa’s was icy. Lillie squeezed her friend’s fingers reassuringly. “Get dressed. Something warm.”

“Wait for me! Don’t go ahead!”

Lillie waited while Theresa pulled on jeans, running shoes, and a Land’s End sweater. She threw more clothes, all her make-up, and a plush stuffed turtle into her pillowcase. “Okay, I’m ready.”

The two girls slipped down the hallway. In the lounge downstairs most of the others waited. The ones who were going carried suitcases or pillowcases of belongings. The ones who were staying still wore nightclothes.

In the lobby a Marine lay stretched out on the floor, deeply asleep.

“It’s like fucking Sleeping Beauty,” Jessica Kameny snickered. She was the only one of the girls who had taken time to put on make-up.

Jon Rosinski said, “So how many are going? Stand over here.”

Twenty kids moved toward Jon, fourteen girls and six boys. Some, Lillie knew, had only decided in the last fifteen minutes, even though they’d all smelled the plan last evening. She scanned the leavers. Mike Franzi, good, you could always count on Mike. Tess, Amy, Sajelle, Rebecca, Bonnie… Elizabeth? That could be real trouble. Jason, Susan, the obnoxious Jessica, too bad she didn’t stay down here. Madison, Emily, Sam, that was another one she could do without. Hannah, Rafe, Alex, Derek, Sophie, Julie… Julie? A major surprise. And Jon, their not-unchallenged organizer, although Lillie wasn’t too bad at organization herself.