Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

After his grandmother died, nothing was the same for Cord, except Clari. Everything else turned itself inside out, like a sock.

“Tell me about the pribir,” he demanded of Dr. Wilkins. It seemed all Cord could do lately was demand, as if he were a three-year-old like Aunt Julie’s newest baby. He knew it, and regretted it, and couldn’t stop it.

Dr. Wilkins, gray-haired and a bit stooped, said, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Grandma didn’t talk to me about them. All she said was they changed the genes for my mother and then for all us kids.”

“All of you born to the girls—women—who went up to the spaceship. Not Dolly or Clari or…”

“I know that. But what did they do on the ship?”

Dr. Wilkins said gently, “I wasn’t there, Cord. I stayed behind, like your grandmother.”

“But―”

“You should ask your mother.”

“Okay,” Cord said. “But you’re the one who can tell me about genetics.”

Dr. Wilkins looked startled. He was really old, as old as Grandma had been. But he knew things, and Cord wanted to learn them.

“Cord, you never showed any interest in genetics before.”

“Well, I am now,” he said stubbornly. But when Dr. Wilkins started to explain messenger RNA and transcription and protein formation, Cord’s mind wandered. This wasn’t what he thirsted for, after all. Even he could see that. Bobby and Angie and Taneesha were much more interested, working at the school software in biology, clustering around Dr. Wilkins and Uncle Rafe to learn to use the complicated, expensive engineering equipment.

Cord turned instead to his mother. That was another thing that had changed. His mother used to mostly ignore him, busy with the farm’s bills and income and boring stuff like that. But now she was home for dinner every night, listening to Cord and Keith and Kella, asking about their day, touching them on the arm or cheek. It made Cord uncomfortable. He didn’t know why she was behaving like this, like all of a sudden she was Grandma. Well, she wasn’t. Grandma was dead. Nobody else was Grandma and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

Still, she was the one to ask about the pribir. He waited until late afternoon on a hot, dry, June day. June was supposed to bring rain, Uncle Jody said. That was the old way for this country; the new way was rain all year long. But now they didn’t have either way. The drought continued, and every night his mother walked out to watch the sunset with her face calm and hard.

On the porch Cord passed Clari coming up to the big house. “Cord? Where are you going?”

“I want to ask my mother about the pribir.”

“Can I come?”

“Sure.” As far as Cord was concerned, Clari could go anywhere he did. She was quiet, and she listened carefully, not like his pesky sister Kella, who interrupted everybody all the time.

The two children started toward the cottonwood stand by the creek, where a long time ago somebody had built a wide bench facing west. It was the prettiest place on the farm, the only place wildflowers bloomed often, even though the creek was only a trickle. Lillie sat there, gazing at the sky flaming red and gold above the long stretch of gray land. “There goes a jackrabbit,” Clari said, but Cord had more important things on his mind than jackrabbits.

“Hi, Cord, Clari,” Lillie said. “Look at that sky.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty. Mom—”

“It would be much prettier with rain clouds in it.”

“Sure. Mom, tell me about the pribir.” Cord flushed in embarrassment. He was demanding again, and anyway it never felt easy to talk to his mother.

But she tried to make it easy. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“Everything. I heard you talk about Andrews Air Force Base with Grandma. What’s an Air Force Base? Were the pribir there?”

“No. Sit down.”

Cord and Clari sat. The wooden bench felt smooth under his rump. Somewhere above him an owl hooted softly.

His mother began slowly, as if searching for the right words. “Andrews Air Force Base was—maybe is again—a big camp for soldiers and planes. After doctors discovered that Grandma and Dr. Wilkins and I were genetically engineered, we were taken there.”

“Why? How did they find out?”

“They found out because we all, all sixty of us, started to smell things. Smell information.”

Clari said timidly, “I don’t understand, Aunt Lillie.”

His mother smiled. “Well, that’s reasonable, because neither did we. All at once all of us just started to have… images in our head. Ideas and pictures and information, all about genetics. We were smelling special complex molecules that the pribir were secretly releasing into the air to send learning to humans on Earth.”

Cord demanded, “How come you kids could smell the molecules and no one else could?”

“We were genetically engineered to do it, before we were born, by a doctor working for the pribir.”

“Why didn’t the pribir just give humans the information themselves? Why use a bunch of kids?” Cord said logically. This roundabout transmission route seemed dumb.

“They didn’t want to risk coming to Earth. A lot of people didn’t like the idea of genetic engineering.”

Well, that made sense. As long as Cord could remember, he’d been told over and over to never mention genetics to anybody from Wenton.

“Also,” his mother continued, “the pribir had something else in mind. Eventually they sent a shuttle —a small spaceship—to pick up all the engineered kids who wanted to go up to the ship. Twenty of us went, including me. Your grandmother Theresa stayed behind.”

Clari asked, “Why did you go?”

His mother hesitated. “I’m not sure. I think partly for the adventure, partly because the pribir were making us smell molecules that made us want to go.”

Cord considered this. “They couldn’t be very strong molecules. Some people didn’t go. Like Grandma.”

“True.”

“What happened on the ship?” Cord said.

Again his mother hesitated. The colors in the western sky were fading now and the stars were coming out, one by one. Finally she said, “A lot happened on the ship. The main thing was that the pribir engineered the babies we girls were all pregnant with. Including you, Cord. They gave you many different genes. Dr. Wilkins thinks a lot of them are designed to let you survive on Earth no matter what changes the planet undergoes, or what environment you find yourself in.”

Like the sandstorm that had killed Grandma. Cord had been told how he’d survived that.

Clari said, “How many pribir were on the ship, Aunt Lillie?”

“Probably a lot. But we only saw two.”

Cord hadn’t known that. “Two? Only two? The whole time?”

“Only two.”

Clari breathed, “What did they look like?”

His mother smiled, but it wasn’t a good smile. “They looked exactly like us. They said they’d been made that way deliberately. Their names were Pam and Pete.”

Cord peered at his mother through the gloom to see if she was joking. She didn’t seem to be. But… “Pam” and “Pete”? Those were names on old, stupid Net shows, not names for pribir. He said harshly, “Then did the pribir put you back on Earth? Why?”

“We didn’t know. To have our babies here, I guess. But, Cord…” The longest hesitation yet. Cord waited. This was going to be important, he could tell from her voice. “Cord, you should probably know this. You’re old enough, and anyway I think Dr. Wilkins already told Bobby and the other kids that hang around with him. The last thing the pribir said to us was that they would be back.”

Cord sat very still. His mother put her arm around him, and for once he didn’t pull away. He hardly felt the arm. Gladness was flooding through him. They were coming back!