Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“And Elizabeth and Ryan never told him?”

“Evidently not. We yell a lot about politics and such but on a personal level, we’re a pretty reticent family.” She waved her hand vaguely at the room. “Although not as reticent as you.”

Evan smiled. “I’m British of a certain class.”

“You’re an enigma.”

“No, that was the Russians. Enigmas wrapped in riddles.” But a shadow passed suddenly behind his eyes.

“What do you—”

“Marianne, let me fill you in on the bits and pieces of news that came in while you were with Noah. First, from the Denebs: they’re bringing aboard the Embassy any members of their ‘clan’—that’s what the translator is calling the L7 haplogroup—who want to come. But you already know that. Second, the—”

“How many?”

“How many have we identified or how many want to come here?”

“Both.” The number of L7 haplotypes had jumped exponentially once they had the first few and could trace family trees through the female line.

“Sixty-three identified, including the three that Gina flew to Georgia to test. Most of the haplogroup may still be in Africa, or it may have largely died out. Ten of those want to visit the Embassy .” He hesitated. “So far, only Noah wants to stay.”

Marianne’s hand paused, glass halfway to her mouth. “To stay ? He didn’t tell me that. How do you know?”

“After Noah… left you this afternoon, Smith came to the lab with that message.”

“I see.” She didn’t. She had been in her room, pulling herself together after the harrowing interview with her son. Her adopted son. She hadn’t been able to tell Noah anything about his parentage because she didn’t know anything: sealed adoption records. Was Noah the way he was because of his genes? Or because of the way she’d raised him? Because of his peer group? His astrological sign? Theories went in and out of fashion, and none of them explained personality.

She said, “What is Noah going to do here? He’s not a scientist, not security, not an administrator…” Not anything. It hurt her to even think it. Her baby, her lost one.

Evan said, “I have no idea. I imagine he’ll either sort himself out or leave. The other news is that the biology team has made progress in matching Terran and Deneb immune system components. There were a lot of graphs and charts and details, but the bottom line is that ours and theirs match pretty well. Remarkably little genetic drift. Different antibodies, of course for different pathogens, and different bodily microorganisms—quite a lot of those, so no chance we’ll be touching skin without their wearing their energy shields.”

“So cancel the orgy.”

Evan laughed. Emboldened by this as much as by the drink, Marianne said, “Are you gay?”

“You know I am, Marianne.”

“I wanted to be sure. We’ve never discussed it. I’m a scientist, after all.”

“You’re an American. Leave nothing unsaid that can be shouted from rooftops.”

Her fuzzy mind had gone back to Noah. “I failed my son, Evan.”

“Rubbish. I told you, he’ll sort himself out eventually. Just be prepared for the idea that it may take a direction you don’t fancy.”

Again that shadow in Evan’s eyes. She didn’t ask; he obviously didn’t want to discuss it, and she’d snooped enough. Carefully she rose to leave, but Evan’s next words stopped her.

“Also, Elizabeth is coming aboard tomorrow.”

“ Elizabeth? Why?”

“A talk with Smith about shore-side security. Someone tried a second attack at the sample collection site.”

“Oh my God. Anybody hurt?”

“No. This time.”

“Elizabeth is going to ask the Denebs to give her the energy-shield technology. She’s been panting for it for Border Patrol ever since the Embassy first landed in the harbor. Evan, that would be a disaster . She’s so focused on her job that she can’t see what will happen if—no, when —the street finds its own uses for the tech, and it always does—” Who had said that? Some writer. She couldn’t remember.

“Well, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Elizabeth can ask, but that doesn’t mean Smith will agree.”

“But he’s so eager to find his ‘clan’—God, it’s so stupid! That Korean mitochondrial sequence, to take just one example, that turns up regularly in Norwegian fishermen, or that engineer in Minnesota who’d traced his ancestry back three hundred years without being able to account for the Polynesian mitochondrial signature he carries— nobody has a cure plan. I mean, a pure clan.”

“Nobody on Earth, anyway.”

“And even if they did,” she barreled on, although all at once her words seemed to have become slippery in her mouth, like raw oysters, “There’s no sin… sif… significant connection between two people with the same mitochondrial DNA than between any other two strangers!”

“Not to us,” Evan said.

“I was talking to Harrison about this just dayes… I mean yesterday…”

“Harrison Rice? The Nobelist? When were you talking to him?

“I said. Yesday—yester… we had caffey. Coffee.”

“Marianne, go to bed. You’re tipsy, and we have work to do in the morning.”

“It’s not work that matters to protection against the shore cloud. Spore choud. Spore cloud. ”

“Nonetheless, it’s work. Now go.”

Noah stood in a corner of an Embassy conference room, which held eleven people and two aliens. Someone had tried to make the room festive with a red paper tablecloth, flowers, and plates of tiny cupcakes. This had not worked. It was still a utilitarian, corporate-looking conference room, filled with people who otherwise would have no conceivable reason to be together at either a conference or a party. Lisa Guiterrez circulated among them: smiling, chatting, trying to put people at ease. It wasn’t working.

Two young women, standing close together for emotional support. A middle-aged man in an Armani suit and Italian leather shoes. An unshaven man, hair in a dirty ponytail, who looked homeless but maybe only because he stood next to Well-Shod Armani. A woman carrying a plastic tote bag with a hole in one corner. And so on and so on. It was the sort of wildly mixed group that made Noah, standing apart with his back to a wall, think of worshippers in an Italian cathedral.

The thought brought him a strained smile. A man nearby, perhaps emboldened by the smile, sidled closer and whispered, “They will let us go back to New York, won’t they?”

Noah blinked. “Why wouldn’t they, if that’s what you want?”

“I want them to offer us shields for the spore cloud! To take back with us to the city! Why else would I come here?”

“I don’t know.”

The man grimaced and moved away. But—why had he even come, if he suspected alien abduction or imprisonment or whatever? And why didn’t he feel what Noah did? Every single one of the people in this room had caused in him the same shock of recognition as had Ambassador Smith. Every single one. And apparently no one else had felt it at all.

But the nervous man needn’t have worried. When the party and its ceiling-delivered speeches of kinship and the invitation to take a longer visit aboard the Embassy were all over, everyone else left. They left looking relieved or still curious or satisfied or uneasy or disappointed ( No energy shield offered! No riches! ), but they all left, Lisa still chattering reassuringly. All except Noah.

Ambassador Smith came over to him. The Deneb said nothing, merely silently waited. He looked as if he were capable of waiting forever.