Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “And anyway, what misery? You’re here now, the farm is going to take care of you, what’s so miserable?”

“We are,” Ashley said. “All of us. Miserable abominations because that what the fucking pribir made us.”

“Stop it, Ashley,” Kella said. “I know you’re just showing off.”

“I was never more serious in my life,” Ashley said, and again Cord glimpsed that something he couldn’t name. It was almost as if Ashley… meant it.

“The pribir did an incredible job of creating us,” Dakota said, and began a technical recital of genetic engineering. Dakota, Cord saw, was also showing off.

“Fuck that,” Ashley said. “The pribir made us so we’re not human and regular humans spit on us and hate us, and I hate the pribir for doing that. If they come back the way they said, I’ll kill them myself. Personally.”

Complete silence.

“I’ll sneak up on them from behind with the scythe in the barn,” Ashley embellished, “and one smack to the head will cut them in two. I’ll dance in the blood. I’ll—”

“That’s enough,” Taneesha said. Until now she’d been quiet, sitting expressionless on a boulder. Now she stood, and Cord saw that she was outraged, and afraid, and eager. “Shut your mouth, Ashley.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, you bitch.”

The two girls started to circle each other. Everyone else drew back. Cord suddenly realized that this was why Ashley and Taneesha had come to the dry arroyo, and maybe the others, too, or at least some of them. This fight that had been building for weeks now, for reasons he couldn’t begin to state.

Cord didn’t want to see it. He wanted Taneesha to win, of course. Ashley’s words had genuinely sickened him. The pribir were heroes, Cord couldn’t wait for their promised return, and for Ashley to say what she had was like… well, like pissing on food. Nonetheless, he still didn’t want to see the fight.

Taneesha, taller and better nourished, got in the first punch, hard and quick to Ashley’s stomach. Ashley bent over in pain and Cord thought the fight had ended right there. But Ashley straightened up and after that she attacked like a wounded bear. Cord had never seen this sort of fight. Ashley screamed, she gouged at Taneesha’s eyes, she kicked and scratched and bit. Was that the way kids fought in the city?

After a stunned moment, four people rushed forward to pull the girls apart. Ashley would not let go. Cord stayed only long enough to make sure that the others had the wildcat under control and that Taneesha was being taken care of. Then he turned and started back to the farm. He was disgusted.

Clari would never behave that way.

No, it was more than that. He didn’t want to see blood dripping down Taneesha’s pretty face.

No, it was more than that. If Taneesha hadn’t fought Ashley, Cord might have done it himself, for what she’d said about the pribir. It filled him with a deep rage that he didn’t know what to do with. He took the rage away from the others, out on the plain, alone.

But that wasn’t a good idea, either. Days were longer than in winter, but not all that long, and being caught alone on the desert at night wasn’t a good idea. He’d learned that at eleven years old.

So he stalked the mile-and-then-some back to the farm, knotting and unknotting his fists, circling a very long way around the outbuildings and cattle pens and cottonwood grove to give himself more time alone, and that was how he happened upon his mother and Uncle Mike.

They sat on the ground under a lone cottonwood farther down the creek than the grove with the bench. This tree’s low branches drooped almost, but not quite, over the two adults. They didn’t touch. But the way they sat so close together, the tension in both figures, caught at Cord. He crept closer and crouched behind a boulder. It didn’t hide him completely and if they turned they would see him, but both were too absorbed to turn.

“—too mixed up to tell,” Mike said.

“I know,” Lillie answered. “They just took whatever they needed from whoever’s sperm. Any of them could have anybody’s genes.”

The pribir. They were talking about the pribir. Cord strained to hear.

“Still,” Mike said, “Kella and Cord look like me. A little. But with your eyes.”

“Well… a little,” Lillie said. “But then, so does Bonnie’s Angie, sort of. We’ll never know.”

“Scott can’t—”

“No. He says the mixing is just too complete. The usual markers simply don’t apply. The pribir apparently built almost from scratch.”

“Still,” Mike said, “it was you and I who slept together on the ship.”

“Plus you and Sophie,” Lillie said. After a moment she added, “Not that it matters any more, Mike. We both know what was being done to drive us. If I blamed you at the time, it was because I was a lovesick child.”

“I know. But, Lillie—”

“Don’t say it. Please.”

“No, I’m going to. It has to be said. We’re not children now.”

“You’re with Hannah now,” Lillie said. “Since how long?”

“Two years. But Lillie… be fair. She was desperate, she and later Sophie, and I’ve never risked being with anyone else who wasn’t one of us, afraid of what genes I’d pass on—”

“Oh, God, I know,” Lillie said. “Some nights I’ve ached. For you, Mike. Only for you.”

“Then we should—”

“No! What are you going to do, tell Hannah to leave the farm? You told me what it was like out there for her, for the kids. Or are you thinking you can just switch wives while we’re both here? What will that do to Hannah?”

“She’s not my wife. We never married. Oh, damn it, Lillie, I know you’re right. We can’t…”

“We can’t even talk about it again,” Lillie said.

“Then if that’s so, give me one kiss. Surely one kiss isn’t too big a booby prize for never having you again.”

Slowly, like a rock slide starting small, Cord saw his mother lean toward Mike and his arms go around her hard.

His rage broke. At Ashley, at Taneesha, at Clari for being sick in bed, at the loss of the pribir who’d said they would come back and hadn’t, at everything. He exploded from behind the rock and shouted, “Stop it, you whore! Stop it, you, get away from my mother!” And then stopped dead because no one spoke like that except in Net shows, he had said the unforgivable no he hadn’t but he was wrong wrong wrong. Now his mother would kill him.

She didn’t. She detached herself from Mike’s arms and walked over to him. A pulse beat in her neck, above her open shirt, and her face was flushed, but her voice was calm. “You’re very angry, Cord. But even angry, you aren’t allowed to behave like this. Apologize, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Cord mumbled, and then he was sorry, sorrier than he’d ever been in his life. He raised his hand, dropped it, hid his face in the crook of his arm. Lillie’s arms went around him and her voice sounded close to his ear, low and sweet and sad.

“I know, Cord. I know, honey. But it’s all right, and no one will ever mention this again.”

Cord knew it was the truth. She never would, and she would make sure Mike didn’t, and she wouldn’t treat him as anything less because of this. Overcome, he said, “I love you, Mom,” and felt her arms tighten and her face grow wet against his ear.

Ashley and Taneesha both came home bloody, and Taneesha’s arm was broken. Dr. Wilkins set it, muttering about childhood stupidity. Aunt Robin, who was supposed to be in charge of Ashley, wanted to whip her but Uncle DeWayne, who along with Lillie and Aunt Sajelle and Uncle Jody was more or less in charge of everybody, refused to allow it. The girls were punished by extra chores and no time outside for two weeks. Both of them healed so fast that Dr. Wilkins took more tissue samples and spent three more days crouched over his gene equipment, trying once again to map all the immune system activity in Ashley and Sajelle.