Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“Oh,” Pam said, and subsided again. After a moment she seemed to remember. “You said Lillie was sick?”

Cord nodded, unable to speak. Keith said eagerly, “You remember our mother? Lillie?”

“Of course,” Pam said, “we’ve only been gone a few months. Now let’s go to your home base. Get in the ship.”

Nothing was like Cord imagined it would be. Nothing.

He was the only one who would ride to the farm in the ship. Keith, Dakota, and Gavin refused. Instead they ran home. “Should we tell everybody you’re here?” Gavin asked uncertainly.

“Of course,” Pete said.

Keith said, “But… they might try to kill you again.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Pete said.

Keith’s eyes narrowed. “Why not? What are you going to do?”

The pribir didn’t answer. Cord looked again at their healthy human good looks, their casual old-fashioned clothing, and a kind of dizziness came over him. It was like a dream, or a Net show. It wasn’t real.

Pam said, “We’ll just smell to them before we open the ship.”

Cord finally had to say something. “Miss Pam, Mr. Pete—”

“Just ‘Pam’ and ‘Pete,’” Pam said smiling, and she reminded Cord of Spring’s ten-year-old daughter, Terri, playing grown-up. The thought horrified him.

He tried again. “If you drug our families… the people at the farm… they’re going to be even madder and want even more to hurt you back. They resent you fooling around with their feelings.”

“Really?” Pete said. He sounded genuinely interested. “Why?”

Cord stared at him, dumbfounded. He had championed the pribir, believed in them… he still believed in them! But even he understood their parents’ objections to what Dr. Wilkins called “mood manipulation.”

Keith said shortly, “They’ll resent it because their feelings are their own.”

Pam said thoughtfully, “But it would be all right to smell information to them? Why is that different? Surely their ideas are just as much their own as their feelings.”

The boys were silent.

“You can’t explain it?” Pam said, and Cord heard triumph in her voice. “See, Pete? They don’t understand their own irrationality any better than we do!”

Keith said hotly, “It’s not irrationality! It’s… it’s…” But he couldn’t explain what it was.

Neither could Cord. He said, “Send them just information, not feelings. Send them information that you can cure my mother and you can stop more babies from dying. Then they’ll accept you.

Pete said, “At least they can understand that much of the right way. Do you humans even realize how perverted your misuse of it has been?”

Pam said, more practically, “What if we can’t cure Lillie or save more babies? Pete’s right, you know. You people exceeded all genetic perversions that we’d planned for. I’m not even sure you’re worth this much trouble at all. We have other planets we’re working on, you know.”

Other planets. Cord clung desperately to the here and now. He repeated, “Just send them information. Say you can cure my mother and you can stop more babies from dying.”

“Well, all right, if you insist,” Pam said sulkily.

Sam and Rafe stirred on the ground. Pete said, “Do you want to dump those two in the ship? We can bring them.”

“I think,” Gavin said quickly, “they’d rather walk.”

“All right. Come on, Lillie’s offspring… what’s your name?”

“Cord,” he said, and his voice came out strangled. The ship door opened.

Nothing was like Cord imagined it would be.

The inside of the ship was small and blank. He was bewildered until he realized this was only one small section, even though he saw nothing that could be called a door. Pete spoke some high-pitched sounds no human throat could ever make, and the ship lifted slightly. A window appeared —just appeared!—in the front and Cord saw they were following Keith and Dakota, moving toward the farm at a fast jog. Gavin must be waiting for Rafe and Sam to wake up. How was Keith going to explain to Jody that the pribir were now in possession of Jody’s cherished gun?

Pam was studying Cord intently. “So you’re Lillie’s offspring.”

“I’m her son, yes. So is Keith.”

She didn’t ask which one was Keith. “You’re the child I built with her eye genes, that gray with gold flecks. And the girl, your… sister? Has she had her offspring yet?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I wanted to be there for the birth. I was very close to your mother, you know. She admired me intensely. We had a special relationship, aboard our ship.”

Fifteen years ago. Didn’t they realized how much that generation had changed in ways that weren’t physical?

Pam continued, “What is she sickening of?”

“A micro. One genetically engineered to kill people in the war. Airborne.”

“Well, I guessed that much. What is the micro’s genome? I wish you could smell me its prabisirks.”

Cord had no idea what a “prabisirk” was. He said helplessly, “You need to ask Dr. Wilkins. Or Emily. They’re our geneticists.”

“I remember Emily,” Pam said. “An intelligent girl. But who is Dr. Wilkins?”

“Scott Wilkins. He was… was one of the kids at Andrews Air Force Base but he didn’t go with my mother and the rest on your ship.”

“Oh, one of those,” Pam said, clearly losing interest in Scott Wilkins. “They don’t matter.”

Cord had to ask. “Don’t matter how?”

“They’re not carrying the engineered genes, the right way,” Pam asked, clearly surprised by the question. “Like you and your children.”

“But…” He couldn’t find words for what he wanted to say. The best he could do was, “But my mother doesn’t have my engineered genes, either. All she got was that she can smell your information. And a boosted immune system.” But not boosted enough.

“Well, that’s true,” Pam said judiciously. “Lillie was only one of the vessel generation, but I became fond of her. Still, you’re right. She doesn’t really matter, either.”

He couldn’t manage an answer. Lillie, Dr. Wilkins, Grandmother Theresa, who had died trying to save Cord’s life . . .“They don’t matter.”

Nothing was like he imagined it would be.

The pribir had another tantrum inside the big house.

Cord had been right; Dr. Wilkins had convinced everyone to let the aliens in without violence. Cord had still been on the ship, but he could easily imagine the arguments Dr. Wilkins used: Angie’s dead baby, Lillie, Hannah, maybe even the dead cattle. He could imagine, too, who had lined up against Dr. Wilkins, who for. Keith and Dakota would have been asked to tell their story over and over. When Sam and Rafe and Gavin straggled in from the arroyo, an arrival that Cord saw on the ship’s monitor, they would have added their voices. In all, the pribir sat waiting for an hour.

It didn’t seem to bother them. Pete had disappeared through a “door” that was there one moment, gone the next. Pam sat doing something incomprehensible with a small piece of machinery she held on her lap. She sat on a low chair, while Cord stood tensely by the monitor.

Cord ventured, “What’s that?”

“An analyzer.” She looked up, scowling. “You people really have created some perversions. What’s wrong with you? Ship plucked this microorganism out of the air right here, by your dwelling, and it’s packed with enough genetic monstrosities to kill every cow on half this continent.”

“It did,” Cord said. “Well, not all. Dr. Wilkins and Emily identified it and made something to cure it, so we saved twenty head of cattle. Out of a herd of three hundred.”

Pam didn’t seem impressed. “Yes, the righter wouldn’t be that difficult.”