Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“I have no idea,” Theresa said.

They all stared at her.

“Neither does Scott Wilkins. Nor the girls. Nobody even has a theory. All we know is that since the girls came to us pregnant, and my daughter hasn’t had twins or triplets, whatever happened didn’t happen on this farm. And, of course, the babies are all completely normal. You’re welcome to examine them, if you like.”

Campion said, “We most certainly want to do that.”

“Now? I can wake them up.”

“No, not now,” Campion said, flushing in annoyance. “When I get a doctor out here!”

“Any time that’s convenient,” Theresa said. Scott had assured her that no one short of a geneticist with expensive analyzers would find anything odd about the children, and it was unlikely this delegation could produce anything like that. Although, if this organization “America Restored” was big enough and funded well enough… she felt a thrill of fear.

Campion said slowly, “There’s something else going on here. There is. Even if those girls came to you pregnant and you had nothing to do with it, the girls are still wrong. Unnatural. Dangerous. We don’t ever want another repeat of the ecological disasters that almost destroyed us. Never again.”

Theresa made herself look bewildered. “I don’t know what more I can do, Mr. Campion. I’ve said you can examine the children, and their mothers, too, if you like. They’re just normal people. Statistical flukes do happen, you know, including multiple births. If you can’t prove anything else… I can tell that your belief in this country is too great to undermine the Constitutional requirement for proof before finding anyone guilty. Of anything.”

Campion looked at her with open dislike. But Lucy said eagerly, “It’s true, Matt. Theresa has agreed to cooperate completely, nothing happened here at the farm, and there’s not any proof anything wrong ever happened at all.”

“That’s so,” Tom said.

Theresa stood. “Can I get you some chicory coffee? Or sumac tea?”

Bill said abruptly, “Theresa, where did that fancy truck come from? The one Jody was driving the other day?”

“Oh, that was recently purchased in Amarillo by a new member of our farm co-op. DeWayne Freeman. He’s a Net developer, you should look him up. Impressive guy.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“He married another of our co-op members.”

Bill nodded, satisfied. Theresa showed them out. Matt Campion gave her a hard stare. When they were out the door, Theresa closed it and leaned against it, breathing hard.

The children were two, three, four. Nothing changed, everything changed. Carlo and his wife Rosalita left the farm, almost breaking Theresa’s heart. Carlo, ever restless, searching for something he couldn’t name, wanted to go to a religious community he’d heard about in Colorado. Theresa only hoped they would be back some day.

Sajelle had two children with DeWayne. Carolina and Jody had a son, Angel. Scott ran genome analyses on each child minutes after the birth. The results were always the same: the frontal lobe included the dense structure connected to the huge number of receptors in the nose. The genes were dominant. The babies would be able to smell information molecules, if anyone had been able to send them.

The genetically altered rice and hay flourished, although out of prudence Theresa insisted the entire crop be consumed on the farm rather than sold. Lillie was disappointed, but she managed production costs and quantities so well that the net savings to the farm was large. Lillie, and the others, turned sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one. Gradually Lillie began to share with Theresa and DeWayne the financial management of the farm, which Theresa had never enjoyed. The federal government resuscitated both itself and the income tax.

Lillie had grown lean, hard-bodied, briskly capable. She and Alex were the only two of the pribir kids who learned to ride. “Pribir kids” —it had been years since Theresa had thought that phrase. There was nothing about the farm that did not look and feel totally normal, except for the large number of children the same age. Everyone looked and acted no different from their neighbors.

Unless you counted Lillie’s attitude toward her children.

As the years rolled by, Theresa became more troubled by this. Lillie was kind to Cord, Keith, and Kella. It was the wary, impersonal kindness of a childless boarder. It reminded Theresa, as nothing else could, of the days at Andrews Air Force Base, when both she and Lillie had been on the receiving end of wary consideration from doctors and intelligence agents and security chiefs.

“It’s not right, Lillie. They need you.”

“I know it’s not right,” Lillie said with her habitual honesty. “But I can’t help it. Although they don’t need me while they have you and Carolina.”

“You’re their mother!”

“I know.”

“Cord, especially, needs you. Haven’t you seen how he follows you around, hoping for your attention?” Kella, Lillie’s daughter, had fastened herself onto Carolina. Keith seemed to have a temperament like Lillie’s, adventurous and self-sufficient. But the look in Cord’s eyes when they followed his mother tore at Theresa’s heart. The only time the little boy seemed happy was with Clari, Senni’s little girl. The two were inseparable. Just a few months apart in age, they shared secrets and games far more than did Cord and his siblings.

Lillie said, in a rare moment of overt emotion, “I can’t… can’t seem to love them, Tess.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know.”

Theresa gazed at Lillie. Theresa didn’t understand, wouldn’t ever understand. Cord—all the children—were beautiful, bright, good-natured. Sometimes Theresa felt guilty because she preferred Cord to her own blood granddaughter, Senni’s older girl, Dolly. Dolly was a whiner, and she had a selfish streak not shared by her younger sister, Clari. Cord was a wonderful child. How could Lillie not feel —

“I don’t know,” Lillie repeated and turned away, her face once more a composed, competent, pleasant mask.

The drought began in the summer of 2064.

At first, no one worried. For years the climate in southeast New Mexico had been improving, increasingly favorable for agriculture, ranching, and shade trees. The farm barely needed to irrigate anymore. Theresa and her “farm co-op” had learned to take their good luck for granted. They were in the right place, during the right years. In the vast planetary climatic lottery, they’d drawn a winning number.

However, after the drought had continued for an entire year, Theresa began to get nervous. The farm had been sustained through the year by savings, by DeWayne, and by good management. But the herd had been reduced in size and the harvest was largely a failure. If the land began to revert to its former aridity, both water and plant life drying up, she would be ruined. There were too many people, too many cows, too much diverse activity to go back to what the farm had been twenty years ago.

It was the same in other places, but not everywhere. With mixed feelings Theresa heard on Net news that the northeast coast, that part of it not under water, continued to rise in productivity, population, and malaria. The Canadian plains also continued to enjoy its gains of the last decades. But the southwest, along with large portions of China, were shifting in weather yet again.

International tensions with China again worsened.

Let it be temporary, Theresa prayed to nothing. Not a dangerous shift, just a few bad years. Farmers and ranchers have always had bad years. Nothing new in that, nothing terrifying.

Jody and Spring decided to end the hog operation. Lillie, studying the figures, agreed. They also stopped growing the genetically altered rice. The creek was not delivering enough floodwater.