Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“How did it get down without us seeing it?” Dakota whispered. Cord understood. He felt like whispering, himself.

Gavin said, “It didn’t. It came in… sideways. Riding low over the ground from the east, I don’t know from how far away. It came in so fast.” His voice held awe.

Cord slid down into the dry arroyo and started to climb up the opposite side. After a moment, the others followed him. Hesitantly he put one hand on the ship. It felt warm, but no warmer than saddle fittings got from the sun. But this wasn’t saddle fittings, this was a space ship, and it had come from somewhere out there among the stars. He was the first human being to touch it.

If Keith hadn’t dragged him to see Kella’s babies… if Gavin hadn’t encountered Taneesha first in his mad rush to inform somebody, anybody, at the farm… if Emily hadn’t rounded up everybody to go inside and shut the windows…

Inside. They would all be in the big house now, and they’d have already noticed the four boys were missing. They’d make Taneesha tell. Or Spring would track them to the arroyo; Spring could track anything.

“We have to make the pribir come out!” he said. “Or go inside ourselves. We have to warn them the others are mad at them and might—”

“Shit, yes,” Dakota breathed. “How?”

Cord looked at the pewter ship. He walked around to the door and knocked, feeling an absolute fool. Well, the pribir were human, weren’t they? That’s what Dr. Wilkins had said: human DNA. So would they recognize knocking?

“Pam! Pete!” Keith bawled. “We’re here! Can you guys come out a minute?”

“Shit, Keith!” Dakota said. “They’re not kids!”

Keith wasn’t deterred. “Miss Pam! Mr. Pete! Can you come out here a minute? We got something you should know!”

Cord held his breath. Nothing happened.

Keith yelled, “We got sick people who need your gene help! Hannah died, and my mother is sick. Lillie… you remember Lillie, she was on your ship before!”

“And she isn’t going in there again,” another voice said.

Cord whipped around. Sam stood across the arroyo, holding a gun. Behind him were Alex, Bonnie, and Rafe.

Time seemed to stop. Cord took a step forward, then didn’t know what to do. But Sam did. He led the others down the arroyo and up the other side. Unerringly he walked to the side of the ship with the door. Dakota, Cord, and Gavin looked at each other. Keith had disappeared.

“Go back home, you boys,” Sam said.

“We―”

“Go! This hasn’t got a damn thing to do with you. You weren’t even born when those aliens… go home.”

Cord had never liked Sam. Rafe and Alex were all right. Mike — Cord’s feelings about Mike were complicated. But he’d always considered Sam a loudmouth, a bully if anyone would have let him be one, and not even very smart. Cord caught Gavin’s and then Dakota’s eyes, and Gavin started talking.

“Rafe, Alex, Bonnie… you don’t want to hurt the pribir. You know you don’t. Whatever they did before, they might be able to cure Lillie. And maybe prevent another baby dying, like Angie’s baby did. And anyway, do you really think a gun could hurt them? They came all the way from the stars in a ship that twists time! Do you think a Smith & Wesson can stop people like that? You’ll only get yourself killed, maybe.”

Bonnie said, “He’s right, Sam. Rafe and I told you this isn’t the way. We—”

Sam fired at the ship, an obscenely loud sound in the gathering dusk. The bullet ricocheted, not even denting the metal, and flew out over the mesquite. Rafe shouted, “You crazy son of a bitch!” and the door of the ship began to open.

Sam stepped back and prepared to fire again. Before he could, another shot sounded and Sam screamed. He dropped the gun and clutched his right arm. Keith stepped from behind a boulder, holding Jody’s cherished Braunhausen. At the same time a cloud of blue gas jetted out of the ship into Sam’s face. Instantly he crumpled to the ground. Rafe, standing closest to him, swayed and also fell. The door finished opening and two people, a young man and young woman dressed in khaki pants and yellow T-shirts, stepped out. They completely ignored Sam and Rafe on the ground, and Keith holding the gun.

“What have you people been doing!” Pam screamed. “How could you have ruined everything in only fifteen fucking years?”

They were people, Cord would think later. They were humans, or made in the shape of humans, with human brains and human feelings. And they were young, Lillie had said so, said that this was their first job of engineering. Human, young, furious that their work was being ruined. Like little kids when a fort was destroyed by the wind, branches and mesquite and an old blanket all blown and scattered over the ground. So they got mad, they… they had a tantrum. The pribir had a tantrum. They were alien kids.

Cord didn’t think this while he stood gaping at Pam and Pete. He couldn’t think anything. Pam looked in her twenties, maybe, her beautiful face a light brown color framed by soft brown hair parted in the middle and falling to her shoulders. Her skin was flawless: no purplish skin cancers, no lines from squinting into the sun, no windbum, no rough patches from harsh soap. Pete, too. Their clothes looked like something on Net shows from decades ago. They carried nothing.

None of it felt real.

Keith recovered first. He walked straight over to Sam and stood over the body. Cord saw his brother’s lip tremble. Keith said, “Is Sam dead?” He still held Jody’s gun.

Pete snapped, “Of course he’s not dead. Neither of them are. They’ll revive in a few minutes. Give me that ridiculous weapon, please!”

After a moment Keith handed Pete the gun. Where did his brother get the courage? Or maybe Keith just didn’t want to end up on the ground like Sam and Rafe. Pam, still scowling and glaring, held out her hand to Gavin and hesitantly he put Sam’s pistol into it.

Cord heard himself say, “Sam didn’t mean to…” Stupid! Of course Sam meant to. “I mean, he just wasn’t sure about… you.”

Dakota said in a sudden burst, “None of them are. The ones who were on your ship before. They say you manipulated them and used them. But we young ones don’t think that. We’ve been waiting for you!”

“You have?” Pam’s face softened. Was she that easy to flatter? Cord thought dazedly. And yet Dakota had only spoken the truth. It was just that this whole thing was not at all what Cord had expected.

Pete said, “Well, of course we would plan to come for the birth of the next generation, next month. You must have known that.”

They knew when the girls would all get pregnant. Which meant they’d known exactly when those temporarily unstoppable sexual feelings would overwhelm the farm. They’d designed all that frantic, driven sex into Cord’s genes. He felt his face grow hot.

Dakota said, “Most of the babies are already born.”

Gavin added, “And one already died.”

Pam’s face darkened again. She was moodier than Ashley, even. “Born? Died? Your gestation period is supposed to be nine months!”

“Yeah, well,” Dakota mumbled.

Gavin added, more helpfully, “Dr. Wilkins says they come early when there’s three at a time.”

Pam and Pete looked at each other. Cord saw that they hadn’t known that. Doubt hit him like a blast of hot air. They were supposed to know all about humans! What else didn’t they know?

Pete said, “One offspring died? Of what?”

“Of this perversion of the right way!” Pam said. She was back to full anger. “This fucking ‘war’! How dare you misuse the right way!”

Keith, now also riled, said, “We didn’t! We’re just trying to survive it!”