Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

She woke in a small space filled with people. Immediately she recognized it, from months and months ago: the shuttle. She was strapped securely into a seat. The other eighteen kids woke at the same time. Pam and Pete, calm again, stood in the open doorway of the shuttle, behind them a huge empty room.

“You can’t speak yet,” Pam said wearily, “so don’t try. It’s only temporary. By the time you get back on Earth the speech inhibitor will have worn off. Yes, you’re going home. We’ve done as much work with your kind as we can. If there had been as many of you as there were supposed to be, or if you could understand more—”

Pete interrupted. It came to Lillie, even through her dazed incomprehension, that Pete sounded apologetic. “It was our first assignment,” he said.

“Just do the best you can, especially you girls. Lillie, Emily… well, we tried,” Pam said, still wearily. “We’ll be back.” She and Pete stepped outside the shuttle and the door closed.

The shuttle moved. Acceleration pushed Lillie against the back of her seat. She closed her eyes, her mind whirling.

The ride seemed very short. Lillie made a few attempts to speak, but they didn’t work. She saw the others do the same. By the time the shuttle came gently to rest, she could talk again. The straps holding her automatically fell away, and the shuttle door opened.

A blast of hot air blew in.

“Where are we?” Rebecca said, to no one. Sophie whimpered. Lillie felt someone grab her hand: Julie. Julie held on tight.

“I’ll check it out,” said Jon, their natural leader. He rose and walked cautiously to the open door. “Well, it looks like Earth. I just don’t know where.”

There was a general stampede outside.

The sun was just rising. They stood in a red glow on a deserted plain, with the hazy outlines of mountains in the distance. A highway ran beside the shuttle, two lanes, straight and utterly empty. A tumbleweed blew by. The rest of the plants that Lillie could see were low and dry and thorny, colored faded greens and browns.

“Looks like a high desert,” Alex said, and Lillie turned to him in surprise.

“Alex! Are you all right? Your stomach—”

“Yeah.” He felt his midriff, looking puzzled. “I’m fine now.”

“How long were we unconscious?” Emily demanded. No one answered. It could have been days, Lillie realized. It had been days for her, before. Pam and Pete had fixed up Alex.

There was nothing they could do for Elizabeth.

“Stand well away from the shuttle,” the shuttle suddenly said. Lillie jumped; Julie cried out. “Stand well away from the shuttle. You will be in danger otherwise. Move now. Stand well away from the shuttle—”

“Move!” Jon said.

They all followed him, running down the road. Lillie looked behind her. The shuttle suddenly collapsed. One minute it was there, the next it was not.

Everyone stopped, uncertain. Jon said tentatively, “Well, I guess this is far enough… Rafe, don’t go back! It said not to!”

Rafe hesitated, stopped.

“Now what?” Bonnie said.

“I don’t feel well,” Sophie said. She turned away and threw up beside the highway.

“Hey, Sophie, hold it together,” Bonnie said softly. “It’ll be all right”

“I’m not afraid, you moron,” Sophie snapped. “I just threw up, is all.”

Sajelle was staring at Sophie strangely.

“Something’s coming!” Jason said.

The nineteen kids moved closer together. Should they run, hide, wait? Nobody knew. They did nothing.

The thing Jason had spotted grew larger, resolved itself into a bus barreling down the highway. A small blue bus. Jon stepped into the road and raised his arm to flag it down. He didn’t have to. The bus skidded to a stop, and Lillie saw that it was old and patched, the metal almost rusted through in places. The door opened and a man and a woman climbed out.

Jon said bravely, “Can you help us? We were… were camping, and we’re lost and we need — ” He stopped dead, staring at the man.

Lillie peered at him. The man didn’t look familiar. But the woman did. She gazed unbelievingly at Lillie. A short, dark woman with a sun-wrinkled face and chopped-off black-gray hair. Old, maybe even in her fifties.

Jon said, choking on the word, “Scott?”

“It’s me,” the man said. He sounded dazed, too.

The woman stepped forward. “You don’t recognize me, Lillie,” she said.

Lillie shook her head.

“It’s Theresa Romero.”

Lillie stared. A black swooping wave passed over her mind, receded. Theresa? “But… but…”

“We didn’t expect you to be this age, either,” the man got out. “I’m Scott Wilkins, people. Don’t you remember me from Andrews Air Force Base?”

It was Jason who got the words out, “But… you’re old!”

“And you’re not,” Scott said. Lillie remembered him as a runty, brash kid always running to keep up with the bigger boys. Now he was tall, a little fat, old.

Rafe blurted, “What year is this?”

Theresa answered, her eyes still on Lillie. “It’s July 8, 2053.”

Again Lillie felt the black faintness brush her, and again she succeeded in pushing it away. 2053. Forty years since she’d left Quantico… not possible…

“Time dilation,” Rafe said. “Oh, wow!”

Julie whimpered. Sam advanced, fists clenched. “If this is some fucking joke—”

“Still the same old Sam,” said the man claiming to be Scott Wilkins. “It’s not a joke, Sam. You people have been gone forty years. Everyone assumed you were dead, or at least weren’t coming back. And Rafe is right, or at least I think he must be right. Your… the pribir must have accelerated into space and then come back, going so fast that time aboard the ship is different. Forty years passed for us, and… whatever time for you.”

Jon said, “Seven and a half months.”

“That we were awake for,” Rafe said. “We don’t know how long we were out. But how… you…”

“They contacted us,” Theresa said. “The old way. They smelled to us, three days ago. Come to this place at this time, pick up the travelers.” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “But they didn’t bother to tell us about ‘time dilation,’ the bastards. Or to tell you, it looks like.”

“No,” Lillie got out. She couldn’t stop staring. Theresa? Theresa fifty-four years old, her voice raspy, her face sagging. Old… “Theresa? My Uncle Keith! Is he…” She couldn’t say it.

Theresa said, “I e-mailed him while Scott was getting the bus going, if you don’t think that was a bitch… Yes, he’s alive. Eighty-seven, but still breathing. He’s in a nursing home in Amarillo.”

“My mom and dad?” Madison demanded, and then everyone was shouting names except Julie, crying hopelessly, and Sam, frozen with fists clenched and no one to hit. Theresa held up her hand.

“No use asking, I didn’t check on anybody else’s family. I only know about Lillie’s uncle because we’ve kept in touch, Lillie and I were friends—” She stopped.

Friends. Girl buddies. But Lillie was fourteen and Theresa was fifty-four. Suddenly Lillie couldn’t take any more. She felt her stomach rising, and, like Sophie, she barely turned away before throwing up beside the road.

When she had finished, Scott Wilkins stood beside her, laying a hand on her stomach. Indignantly she pushed him away.

“It’s all right, Lillie, I’m a doctor.”

A doctor? Runty, tag-along Scott?

He felt her belly, then squatted to lay his head against it. Lillie saw Sajelle watching her with the same strange look Sajelle had given Sophie.

Scott straightened, pulled Sajelle toward him, felt her belly. She submitted, very unlike Sajelle, without protest. Why? Did they all have some awful worm or virus in their stomachs? Were they seriously sick?