Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“Then—”

“I don’t know,” Evan said. And again, “I just don’t know.”

Noah was somebody else.

He’d spent his blood-for-the-Denebs money on sugarcane, and it turned out to be one of the really good transformations. He was a nameless soldier from a nameless army: brave and commanding and sure of himself. Underneath he knew it was an illusion (but he never used to know that!). However, it didn’t matter. He stood on a big rock at the south end of Central Park, rain and discarded plastic bags blowing around him, and felt completely, if temporarily, happy. He was on top of the world, or at least seven feet above it, and nothing seemed impossible.

The alien token in his pocket began to chime, a strange syncopated rhythm, atonal as no iPhone ever sounded. Without a second’s hesitation—he could face anything!—Noah pulled it from his pocket and pressed its center.

A woman’s voice said, “Noah Richard Jenner?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“This is Dr. Lisa Guiterrez at the Deneb Embassy . We would like to see you, please. Can you come as soon as possible to the UN Special Mission Headquarters, on the Embassy pier?”

Noah drew a deep breath. Then full realization crashed around him, loud and blinding as last week’s flashbang. Oh my God —why hadn’t he seen it before? Maybe because he hadn’t been a warrior before. His mother had— son of a bitch…

“Noah?”

He said, “I’ll be there.”

The submarine surfaced in an undersea chamber. A middle-aged woman in jeans and blazer, presumably Dr. Guiterrez, awaited Noah in the featureless room. He didn’t much notice woman or room. Striding across the gangway, he said, “I want to see my mother. Now. She’s Dr. Marianne Jenner, working here someplace.”

Dr. Guiterrez didn’t react as if this were news, or strange. She said, “You seem agitated.” Hers was the human voice Noah had heard coming from the alien token.

“I am agitated! Where is my mother?”

“She’s here. But first, someone else wants to meet you.”

“I demand to see my mother!”

A door in the wall slid open, and a tall man with coppery skin and bare feet stepped through. Noah looked at him, and it happened again.

Shock, bewilderment, totally unjustified recognition—he knew this man, just as he had known the nurse who washed tear gas from his and a child’s eyes during the West Side demonstration. Yet he’d never seen him before, and he was an alien . But the sense of kinship was powerful, disorienting, ridiculous.

“Hello, Noah Jenner,” the ceiling said. “I am Ambassador Smith. Welcome to the Embassy .”

“I—”

“I wanted to welcome you personally, but I cannot visit now. I have a meeting. Lisa will help you get settled here, should you choose to stay with us for a while. She will explain everything. Let me just say—”

Impossible to deny this man’s sincerity, he means every incredible word—

“—that I’m very glad you are here.”

After the alien left, Noah stood staring at the door through which he’d vanished. “What is it?” Dr. Guiterrez said. “You look a bit shocked.”

Noah blurted out, “I know that man!” A second later he realized how dumb that sounded.

She said gently, “Let’s go somewhere to talk, Noah. Somewhere less… wet.”

Water dripped from the sides of the submarine, and some had sloshed onto the floor. Sailors and officers crossed the gangway, talking quietly. Noah followed Lisa from the sub bay, down a side corridor, and into an office cluttered with charts, printouts, coffee mugs, a laptop—such an ordinary looking place that it only heightened Noah’s sense of unreality. She sat in an upholstered chair and motioned him to another. He remained standing.

She said, “I’ve seen this before, Noah. What you’re experiencing, I mean, although usually it isn’t as strong as you seem to be feeling it.”

“Seen what? And who are you, anyway? I want to talk to my mother!”

She studied him, and Noah had the impression she saw more than he wanted her to. She said, “I’m Dr. Lisa Guiterrez, as Ambassador Smith said. Call me Lisa. I’m a genetics counselor serving as the liaison between the ambassador and those people identified as belonging to his haplotype, L7, the one identified by your mother’s research. Before this post, I worked with Dr. Barbara Formisano at Oxford, where I also introduced people who share the same haplotype. Over and over again I’ve seen a milder version of what you seem to be experiencing now—an unexpected sense of connection between those with an unbroken line of mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to their haplogroup clan mother. It—”

“That sounds like bullshit!”

“—is important to remember that the connection is purely symbolic. Similar cell metabolisms don’t cause shared emotions. But—an important ‘but’!—symbols have a powerful effect on the human mind. Which in turn causes emotion.”

Noah said, “I had this feeling once before. About a strange woman, and I had no way of knowing if she’s my ‘haplotype.’”

Lisa’s gaze sharpened. She stood. “What woman? Where?”

“I don’t know her name. Listen, I want to talk to my mother!”

“Talk to me first. Are you a sugarcane user, Noah?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Habitual use of sugarcane heightens certain imaginative and perceptual pathways in the brain. Ambassador Smith—Well, let’s set that aside for a moment. I think I know why you want to see your mother.”

Noah said, “Look, I don’t want to be ruder than I’ve already been, but this isn’t your business. Anything you want to say to me can wait until I see my mother.”

“All right. I can take you to her lab.”

It was a long walk. Noah took in very little of what they passed, but then, there was very little to take in. Endless white corridors, endless white doors. When they entered a lab, two people that Noah didn’t know looked up curiously. Lisa said, “Dr. Jenner—”

The other woman gestured at a far door. Before she could speak, Noah flung the door open. His mother sat at a small table, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee she wasn’t drinking. Her eyes widened.

Noah said, “Mom—why the fuck didn’t you ever tell me I was adopted?”

S minus 9.0 months

Evan and Marianne sat in his room, drinking sixteen-year-old single-malt scotch. She seldom drank but knew that Evan often did. Nor had she ever gone before to his quarters in the Embassy, which were identical to hers: ten-foot square room with a bed, chest of drawers, small table, and two chairs. She sat on one of the straight-backed, utilitarian chairs while Evan lounged on the bed. Most of the scientists had brought with them a few items from home, but Evan’s room was completely impersonal. No art, no framed family photos, no decorative pillows, not even a coffee mug or extra doughnut carried off from the cafeteria.

“You live like a monk,” Marianne said, immediately realizing how drunk she must be to say that. She took another sip of scotch.

“Why didn’t you ever tell him?” Evan said.

She put down her glass and pulled at the skin on her face. The skin felt distant, as if it belonged to somebody else.

“Oh, Evan, how to answer that? First Noah was too little to understand. Kyle and I adopted him in some sort of stupid effort to save the marriage. I wasn’t thinking straight—living with an alcoholic will do that, you know. If there was one stupid B-movie scene of alcoholic and wife that we missed, I don’t know what it was. Shouting, pleading, pouring out all the liquor in the house, looking for Kyle in bars at two a.m.… anyway. Then Kyle died and I was trying to deal with that and the kids and chasing tenure and there was just too much chaos and fragility to add another big revelation. Then somehow it got too late, because Noah would have asked why he hadn’t been told before, and then somehow… it all just got away from me.”