Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“You don’t want to believe it. Neither did I. But it’s true—humanity’s been royally fucked over.”

“Harrison, love—” She took another step toward him but the vomit rose in her throat and she bolted for the bathroom. There was nothing left to throw up but her body kept trying anyway. When it was over, she felt a little better, but light-headed. Holding on to the walls, she went in search of Harrison.

He’d left the apartment. To go where? She didn’t know. But it seemed urgent that she find him. Staggering back to the bedroom, she collapsed on the bed and picked up her cell.

“Hello?” His voice was rough with sleep, even deeper than usual. “Marianne?”

“Yes. Tim—I need you. Something’s happened. I need you to go find Harrison for me. Please. Oh, please. Now.”

At 3:00 a.m. Tim kicked the door of the apartment. Marianne, waiting, flung it open. Harrison sagged in Tim’s arms. Tim’s mouth was bleeding. “Found him in a bar on Amsterdam. Not the kind of place somebody like him should be.”

“Was there—”

“Trouble? Yeah. But no biggie. Where do you want him?”

Harrison mumbled something unintelligible. Sodden and with Tim’s blood smeared on his hair, he was barely conscious. Marianne said, “Bring him into the bedroom—or do you think he needs to go to an ER?”

“For a drunk? Nah. Long as he don’t puke and breathe it in. I’ll lie him on his side and you just watch him.”

“She can’t watch him,” Sissy said, because of course Sissy had insisted on accompanying Tim, in order to be with Marianne. “She’s sick. I’ll watch him.”

“Sure,” Tim said. “We’ll all stay.” He lay down on the rug, his long body stretched full length, and instantly fell asleep. Sissy covered him tenderly with the sofa throw.

“You got another blanket somewhere, Marianne? You sleep on the sofa and I’ll sit up with Harrison. I’m not at all tired.”

She didn’t look tired. Sissy’s round, pretty face looked alert and concerned. Her frizzy curls, bright blond at the moment, stood around her head like a halo. Sainted mother to the world. Sissy shouldn’t have to watch Harrison, but Marianne was too exhausted to argue. Her stomach felt as if she’d expelled not only its contents but the lining.

“Thanks, Sissy. I—” If she finished the sentence, she would start to sob, and she didn’t want to do that.

Sissy found more blankets in the tiny coat closet, covered Marianne, and stood looking down at her. “Does Harrison do this often?”

“No.” Oh God, she hadn’t even told Sissy or Tim what had happened. Her illness, her frantic worry… Sissy didn’t even know. Marianne said, “Yesterday his daughter killed herself.”

Sissy drew a sharp breath. She squeezed onto the sofa beside Marianne. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Harrison said that Sarah’s baby wouldn’t stop crying and Sarah just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Sissy grimaced in disgust. “That’s no reason to kill yourself. Plenty of babies won’t stop crying and their mamas don’t kill themselves. How does that help? It’s just cowardlike.”

“Sarah might have already had postpartum depression.”

“So what? You don’t kill yourself if you got kids to take care of. You just don’t. You don’t have that right.”

Marianne said nothing. The other side of Sissy’s sure confidence was a kind of arrogance that the young woman was completely unaware of. But Sissy’s hand holding hers felt warm, reassuring. On the floor, Tim snored softly.

“Still,” Sissy went on, “I can see how Harrison got drunk from shock. I’ll watch him real carefully. But Marianne—you should face something.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry to say this, but you should face it. That man is going to leave you now.”

Marianne pulled her fingers from Sissy’s. “No, you don’t understand, he—”

“I do understand. You don’t. I’ve been watching you two whenever he picks you up at the office or the airport, which incidentally isn’t that often. I know, I know, he’s doing important work. But he’s one of those with tunnel vision, Marianne, and his tunnel just cracked wide open to the sky. He’s going to panic and lash out and leave you. You need to be ready for that.”

“You’re wrong, Sissy.”

“I hope so. Now you sleep.” Sissy switched off the light and went into the bedroom to watch Harrison.

Marianne thought that sleep would be long coming, but it wasn’t. One careful shift of her body on the sofa and she was out. The next morning, Tim and Sissy made breakfast that neither Marianne nor Harrison could eat. When it was clear to Sissy that both of them were done vomiting, she and Tim tactfully left.

Harrison slept most of the day. When he was awake, he wanted to be alone in the bedroom. The day after that, he spent hunched over his computer, surrounded by an invisible and impenetrable wall. The third day he flew to Indiana for Sarah’s funeral. Politely, distantly, he asked Marianne to not accompany him. Even before he called her from Terre Haute, she knew what he would say.

Before he returned home, she’d moved out.

Tim put her furniture into storage. Sissy made a back room at the Star Brotherhood Foundation into a bedroom. The office that Jonah Stubbins had made possible had a bathroom with shower. Marianne ate her meals out, or ate what Sissy provided for her. She lost weight. She slept badly. The only thing that helped was work, and then more work. When there was nothing to work on, she read on the Internet, using Harrison’s password for access to sites she could not have accessed on her own.

Karcher’s initial research had spawned dozens of studies on both infants and mice, even though funding for science had all but disappeared since the Collapse. It was clear that something had affected the children’s brains in utero, but unclear just what that something was. Humans had always varied enormously in auditory structures—and perhaps mice did, too. With something that small, it was difficult to tell. In fact, nobody was even sure what all the auditory structures were. The babies’ receiving areas, on the upper temporal lobes, had increased neurons, or decreased neurons, or neurons with unexpected connections. Sometimes one end of the area was larger, sometimes the opposite end. Other brain activity in areas associated with hearing—auditory thalamus, Brodmann area, hippocampus, superior temporal gyrus—also differed from one child to the next. Some EEGs showed statistically significant enhancement in alpha-wave activity; some did not. Strange cortical behavior resulted from exposure to gamma waves.

Basically, nobody understood what was going on in these kids’ heads.

What was understood was that a small percentage of post-spore infants was deaf, and the rest cried nearly every moment they were awake. Eli Lilly’s renamed infant tranquilizer, Calminex, had not yet cleared clinical trials but already had ignited a firestorm of online controversy. Was it right to drug small children? Was it right not to drug them, when so many failed to thrive due to their constant agitation? What would be the long-term effects of that many stress hormones constantly flooding developing nervous systems? What would be the short-term effects of the drug? Would parents who used it be abusers of their children, or realistic people adjusting to circumstances?

The Eli Lilly research lab was hit with a truck bomb. The company did not discontinue trials.

“Marianne,” Sissy said one afternoon at the office, “why don’t you go for a walk? You’ve been plopped in front of that computer for three hours.”