The Best of Nancy Kress

  “I’m sorry again,” our mother says, and there is physical movement registered in the field of transmission.

  We do not understand. But our mother has spoken of new programs, of programs created since the seeding, in response to the environment. This we understand, and now is the time to tell our mother of our need. Our mother has asked. Sorrow floods us, rejoicing disappears, but now is the time to tell what is necessary.

  Our mother will make all functional once more.

  “Don’t scold hirs like that, hirs is just a child,” Kabil said. “Harrah, stop crying, we know you didn’t mean to impute to them any inferiority.”

  Micah, hirs back turned to the tiny parental drama, said to Cal, “Seismic survey complete. No quakes, only the most minor geologic disturbances…really, the local history shows remarkable stability.”

  “Then what accounts for the difference between their count of themselves and the replication rate?”

  “It can’t be a real difference.”

  “But…oh! Listen. Did they just say—”

  Hirs turned slowly toward the holocube.

  Harrah said at the same moment, through hirs tears, “They stopped dancing.”

  Cal said, “Repeat that,” remembered hirsself, and moved into the transmission field, replacing Harrah. “Repeat that, please, Seeding 140. Repeat your last transmission.”

  The motionless metal oysters said, “We have created a new program in response to the Others in the environment. The Others who destroy us.”

  Cal said, very pleasantly, “‘Others’? What others?”

  “The new ones. The mindless ones. The destroyers.”

  “There are no others in your environment,” Micah said. “What are you trying to say?”

  Ling, across the deck in a cloud of pink baktors, said, “Oh, oh…no…they must have divided into factions. Invented warfare among themselves! Oh…”

  Harrah stopped sobbing and stood, wide-eyed, on hirs sturdy short legs.

  Cal said, still very pleasant, “Seeding 140, show us these others. Transmit visuals.”

  “But if we get close enough to the Others to do that, we will be destroyed!”

  Ling said sadly, “It is warfare.”

  Deb compressed hirs beautiful lips. Kabil turned away, to gaze out at the stars. Micah said, “Seeding…do you have any historical transmissions of the Others, in your databanks? Send those.”

  “Scanning…sending.”

  Ling said softly, “We always knew warfare was a possibility for any creations. After all, they have our unrefined DNA, and for millennia…” Hirs fell silent.

  “The data is only partial,” Seeding 140 said. “We were nearly destroyed when it was sent to us. But there is one data packet until the last few minutes of life.”

  The cheerful, dancing oysters vanished from the holocube. In their place appeared the fronds of a tall, thin plant, waving slightly in the thick air. It was stark, unadorned, elemental. A multicellular organism rooted in the rocky ground, doing nothing.

  No one on the ship spoke.

  The holocube changed perspective, to a wide scan. Now there were whole stands of fronds, acres of them, filling huge sections of the rift. Plant after plant, drab olive green, blowing in the unseen wind.

  After the long silence, Seeding 140 said, “Our mother? The Others were not there for ninety-two years. Then they came. They replicate much faster than we do, and we die. Our mother, can you do what is necessary?”

  Still no one spoke, until Harrah, frightened, said, “What is it?”

  Micah answered, hirs voice clipped and precise. “According to the data packet, it is an aerobic organism, using a process analogous to photosynthesis to create energy, giving off oxygen as a by-product. The data includes a specimen analysis, broken off very abruptly as if the AI failed. The specimen is non-carbon-based, non-DNA. The energy sources sealed in Seeding 140 are anaerobic.”

  Ling said sharply, “Present oxygen content of the rift atmosphere?”

  Cal said, “Seven point six two percent.” Hirs paused. “The oxygen created by these…these ‘others’ is poisoning the seeding.”

  “But,” Deb said, bewildered, “why did the original drop include such a thing?”

  “It didn’t,” Micah said. “There is no match for this structure in the gene banks. It is not from Earth.”

  “Our mother?” Seeding 140 said, over the motionless fronds in the holocube. “Are you still there?”

  Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: As we approach this millennium marker, rejoice that humanity has passed beyond both spiritual superstition and spiritual denial. We have a faith built on physical truth, on living genetics, on human need. We have, at long last, given our souls not to a formless Deity but to the science of life itself. We are safe, and we are blessed.

  Micah said suddenly, “It’s a trick.”

  The other adults stared at hirs. Harrah had been hastily reconfigured for sleep. Someone—Ling, most likely—had dissolved the floating baktors and blanked the wall displays, and only the empty transmission field added color to the room. That, and the cold stars beyond.

  “Yes,” Micah continued, “a trick. Not malicious, of course. But we programmed them to learn, and they did. They had some seismic event, or some interwarfare, and it made them wary of anything unusual. They learned that the unusual can be deadly. And the most unusual thing they know of is us, set to return at 3,000. So they created a transmission program designed to repel us. Xenophobia, in a stimulus-response learning program suited to this environment. You said it yourself, Ling, the learning components are built on human genes. And we have xenophobia as an evolved survival response!”

  Cal jack-knifed across the room. Tension turned hirs ungraceful. “No. That sounds appealing, but nothing we gave Seeding 140 would let them evolve defenses that sophisticated. And there was no seismic event for the initial stimulus.”

  Micah said eagerly, “We’re the stimulus! Our anticipated return! Don’t you see…we’re the ‘others’!”

  Kabil said, “But they call us ‘mother’…They were thrilled to see us. They’re not xenophobic to us.”

  Deb spoke so softly the others could barely hear. “Then it’s a computer malfunction. Cosmic bombardment of their sensory equipment. Or at least, of the unit that was ‘dying.’ Malfunctioning before the end. All that sensory data about oxygen poisoning is compromised.”

  “Of course!” Ling said. But hirs was always honest. “At least…no, compromised data isn’t that coherent, the pieces don’t fit together so well biochemically…”

  “And so non-terrestrially,” Cal said, and at the jagged edge in his voice, Micah exploded.

  “California, these are not native life! There is no native life in the galaxy except on Earth!”

  “I know that, Micah,” Cal said, with dignity. “But I also know this data does not match anything in the d-bees.”

  “Then the d-bees are incomplete!”

  “Possibly.”

  Ling put hirs hands together. They were long, slender hands, with very long nails, created just yesterday. I want to grab the new millennium with both hands, Ling had laughed before the party, and hold it firm. “Spores. Panspermia.”

  “I won’t listen to this!” Micah said.

  “An old theory,” Ling went on, gasping a little. “Seeding 140 said the others weren’t there for their first hundred years. But if spores blew in from space on the solar wind, and the environment was right for them to germinate—”

  Deb said quickly, “Spores aren’t really life. Wherever they came from, they’re not alive.”

  “Yes, they are,” Kabil said. “Don’t quibble. They’re alive.”

  Micah said loudly, “I’ve given my entire life to the Great Mission. I was on the original drop for this very planet.”

  “They’re alive,” Ling said, “and they’re not ours.”

  “My entire life!” Micah said. Hirs looked at each of them in turn, hirs face stony, and something te
rrible glinted behind the beautiful deep-green eyes.

  Our mother does not answer. Has our mother gone away?

  Our mother would not go away without helping us. It must be they are still dancing.

  We can wait.

  “The main thing is Harrah, after all,” Kabil said. Hirs sat slumped on the floor. They had been talking so long.

  “A child needs secure knowledge. Purpose. Faith,” Cal said.

  Ling said wearily, “A child needs truth.”

  “Harrah,” Deb crooned softly. “Harrah, made of all of us, future of our genes, small heart Harrah…”

  “Stop it, Debaron,” Cal said. “Please.”

  Micah said, “Those things down there are not real. They are not. Test it, Micah. I’ve said so already. Test it. Send down a probe, and try to bring back samples. There’s nothing there.”

  “You don’t know that, Micah.”

  “I know,” Micah said, and was subtly revitalized. Hirs sprang up. “Test it!”

  Ling said, “A probe isn’t necessary. We have the transmitted data and—”

  “Not reliable!” Micah said.

  “—and the rising oxygen content. Data from our own sensors.”

  “Outgassing!”

  “Micah, that’s ridiculous. And a probe—”

  “A probe might come back contaminated,” Cal said.

  “Don’t risk contamination,” Kabil said suddenly, urgently. “Not with Harrah here.”

  “Harrah, made of us all…” Deb had turned hirs back on the rest now, and lay almost curled into a ball, lost in hirs powerful imagination. Deb!

  Kabil said, almost pleadingly, to Ling, “Harrah’s safety should come first.”

  “Harrah’s safety lies in facing truth,” Ling said. But hirs was not strong enough to sustain it alone. They were all so close, so knotted together, a family. Knotted by Harrah and by the Great Mission, to which Ling, no less than the others, had given his life.

  “Harrah, small heart,” sang Deb.

  Kabil said, “It isn’t as if we have proof about these ‘others.’ Not real proof. We don’t actually know.”

  “I know,” Micah said.

  Cal looked bleakly at Kabil. “No. And it is wrong to sacrifice a child to a supposition, to a packet of compromised data, to a…a superstition of creations so much less than we are. You know that’s true, even though we none of us never admit it. But I’m a biologist. The creations are limited DNA, with no ability to self-modify. Also strictly regulated nano, and AI only within careful parameters. Yes, of course they’re life forms deserving respect on their own terms, of course, I would never deny that—”

  “None of us would,” Kabil said.

  “—but they’re not us. Not ever us.”

  A long silence, broken only by Deb’s singing.

  “Leave orbit, Micah,” Cal finally said, “before Harrah wakes up.”

  Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: We are not gods, never gods, no matter what the powers evolution and technology have given us, and we do not delude ourselves that we are gods, as other cultures have done at other millennia. We are human. Our salvation is that we know it, and do not pretend otherwise.

  Our mother? Are you there? We need you to save us from the Others, to do what is necessary. Are you there?

  Are you still dancing?

  Afterword to “My Mother, Dancing”

  This story is one of the few I have ever set in the very far future. Usually I prefer near-future, on-Earth stories; there is less setting to invent and more concrete details I can plunder from reality. However, some stories need far-flung space travel, radically altered human biology, and a much different culture.

  Every human culture we know of has had some form of religion. One function of religion is to explain creation. Another is to locate humans in that creation, including our purpose for existence. And all religions eventually face challenges from our growing body of scientific knowledge. Some incorporate new scientific facts; some do not; some do both at different times. The Catholic Church punished Galileo for heliocentrism, but it accepts evolution.

  I enjoyed creating both the empty-universe religion of this story and the non-DNA-organism challenge to that religion. My characters, faced with their spiritual crisis, do not behave very well. Perhaps the next ship to come along will show more flexibility, and more courage.

  TRINITY

  “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!”

  —Mark 9:24

  At first I didn’t recognize Devrie.

  Devrie—I didn’t recognize Devrie. Astonished at myself, I studied the wasted figure standing in the middle of the bare reception room: arms like wires, clavicle sharply outlined, head shaved, dressed in that ugly long tent of light-weight gray. God knew what her legs looked like under it. Then she smiled, and it was Devrie.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Hello, Seena. Come on in.”

  “I am in.”

  “Barely. It’s not catching, you know.”

  “Stupidity fortunately isn’t,” I said and closed the door behind me. The small room was too hot; Devrie would need the heat, of course, with almost no fat left to insulate her bones and organs. Next to her I felt huge, although I am not. Huge, hairy, sloppy-breasted.

  “Thank you for not wearing bright colors. They do affect me.”

  “Anything for a sister,” I said, mocking the old childhood formula, the old sentiment. But Devrie was too quick to think it was only mockery; in that, at least, she had not changed. She clutched my arm and her fingers felt like chains, or talons.

  “You found him. Seena, you found him.”

  “I found him.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  “Sit down first, before you fall over. God, Devrie, don’t you eat at all?”

  “Tell me,” she said. So I did.

  Devrie Caroline Konig had admitted herself to the Institute of the Biological Hope on the Caribbean island of Dominica eleven months ago, in late November of 2017, when her age was 23 years and 4 months. I am precise about this because it is all I can be sure of. I need the precision. The Institute of the Biological Hope is not precise; it is a mongrel, part research laboratory in brain sciences, part monastery, part school for training in the discipline of the mind. That made my baby sister guinea pig, postulant, freshman. She had always been those things, but, until now, sequentially. Apparently so had many other people, for when eccentric Nobel Prize winner James Arthur Bohentin had founded his Institute, he had been able to fund it, although precariously. But in that it did not differ from most private scientific research centers.

  Or most monasteries.

  I wanted Devrie out of the Institute of the Biological Hope.

  “It’s located on Dominica,” I had said sensibly—what an ass I had been—to an unwasted Devrie a year ago, “because the research procedures there fall outside United States laws concerning the safety of research subjects. Doesn’t that tell you something, Devrie? Doesn’t that at least give you pause? In New York, it would be illegal to do to anyone what Bohentin does to his people.”

  “Do you know him?” she had asked.

  “I have met him. Once.”

  “What is he like?”

  “Like stone.”

  Devrie shrugged, and smiled. “All the participants in the Institute are willing. Eager.”

  “That doesn’t make it ethical for Bohentin to destroy them. Ethical or legal.”

  “It’s legal on Dominica. And in thinking you know better than the participants what they should risk their own lives for, aren’t you playing God?”

  “Better me than some untrained fanatic who offers himself up like an exalted Viking hero, expecting Valhalla.”

  “You’re an intellectual snob, Seena.”

  “I never denied it.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t really objecting not to the Institute’s dangers but to its purpose? Isn’t the ‘Hope’ part what really bothers you?”

  “I d
on’t think scientific method and pseudo-religious mush mix, no. I never did. I don’t think it leads to a perception of God.”

  “The holotank tapes indicate it leads to a perception of something the brain hasn’t encountered before,” Devrie said, and for a moment I was silent.

  I was once, almost, a biologist. I was aware of the legitimate studies that formed the basis for Bohentin’s megalomania: the brain wave changes that accompany anorexia nervosa, sensory deprivation, biological feedback, and neurotransmitter stimulants. I have read the historical accounts, some merely pathetic but some disturbingly not, of the Christian mystics who achieved rapture through the mortification of the flesh and the Eastern mystics who achieved anesthesia through the control of the mind, of the faith healers who succeeded, of the carcinomas shrunk through trained will. I knew of the research on focused clairvoyance during orgasm, and of what happens when neurotransmitter number and speed are increased chemically.

  And I knew all that was known about the twin trance.

  Fifteen years earlier, as a doctoral student in biology, I had spent one summer replicating Sunderwirth’s pioneering study of drug-enhanced telepathy in identical twins. My results were positive, except that within six months all eight of my research subjects had died. So had Sunderwirth’s. Twin-trance research became the cloning controversy of the new decade, with the same panicky cycle of public outcry, legal restrictions, religious misunderstandings, fear, and demagoguery. When I received the phone call that the last of my subjects was dead—cardiac arrest, no history of heart disease, forty-three Goddamn years old—I locked myself in my apartment, with the lights off and my father’s papers clutched in my hand, for three days. Then I resigned from the neurology department and became an entomologist. There is no pain in classifying dead insects.

  “There is something there,” Devrie had repeated. She was holding the letter sent to our father, whom someone at the Institute had not heard was dead. “It says the holotank tapes—’’