Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (68 page)

Marianne said, “What do the Denebs think?” Supposedly Rice was co-lead with Deneb Scientist Jones.

He said, his anger palpable even through the glass wall of the slammer, “I have no idea what they think. None of us have seen any of them.”

“Not seen them?”

“No. We share all our data and samples, of course. Half of the samples go into an airlock for them, and the data over the LAN. But all we get in return is a thank-you on screen. Maybe they're not making progress, either, but at least they could tell us what they haven't discovered.”

“Do we know . . . this may sound weird, but do we know that they're still here at all? Is it possible they all left Earth already?”
Noah
.

He said, “It's possible, I suppose. We have no news from the outside world, of course, so it's possible they pre-recorded all those thank-yous, blew up New York, and took off for the stars. But I don't think so. If they had, they'd have least unsealed us from this floating plastic bubble. Which, incidentally, has become completely opaque, even on the observation deck.”

Marianne hadn't known there was an observation deck. She and Evan had not found it during their one exploration of the Embassy.

Dr. Rice continued. “Your cells are not making an interferon response, either. That's a small protein molecule that can be produced in any cell in response to the presence of viral nucleic acid. You're not making it.”

“Which means . . .”

“Probably it means that there is no viral nucleic acid in your cells.”

“Are Robbie's cells making interferon?”

“Yes. Also antibodies. Plus immune responses like—Ann, what does your chart on Chavez show for this morning?”

Ann said, “Fever of 101, not at all dangerous. Chest congestion, also not at dangerous levels, some sinus involvement. He has the equivalent of mild bronchitis.”

Marianne said, “But why is Robbie sick when the rest of us aren't?”

“Ah,” Harrison Rice said, and for the first time she heard the trace of a Canadian accent, “that's the big question, isn't it? In immunology, it always is. Sometimes genetic differences between infected hosts are the critical piece of the puzzle in understanding why an identical virus causes serious disease or death in one individual—or one group—and little reaction or none at all in other people. Is Robbie sick and you not because of your respective genes? We don't know.”

“But you can use Robbie's antibodies to maybe develop a vaccine?”

He didn't answer. She knew the second the words left her mouth how stupid they were. Rice might have antibodies, but he had no time. None of them had enough time.

Yet they all worked on, as if they did. Because that's what humans did.

Instead of answering her question, he said, “I need more samples, Marianne.”

“Yes.”

Fifteen minutes later he entered her slammer, dressed in full space suit and sounding as if speaking through a vacuum cleaner. “Blood samples plus a tissue biopsy, just lie back down and hold still, please . . .”

During a previous visit, he had told her of an old joke among immunologists working with lethal diseases: “The first person to isolate a virus in the lab by getting infected is a hero. The second is a fool.” Well, that made Marianne a fool. So be it.

She said to Rice, “And the aliens haven't . . . Ow!”

“Baby.” He withdrew the biopsy needle and slapped a bandage over the site.

She tried again. “And the aliens haven't commented at all on Robbie's diagnosis? Not a word?”

“Not a word.”

Marianne frowned. “Something isn't right here.”

“No,” Rice said, bagging his samples, “it certainly is not.”

NOAH

Nothing
, Noah thought, had ever felt more right, not in his entire life.

He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Llaa^moh¡. She still slept, her naked body and long legs tangled in the light blanket made of some substance he could not name. Her wiry dark hair smelled of something like cinnamon, although it probably wasn't. The blanket smelled of sex.

He knew now why he had not felt the same shock of recognition at their first meeting that he had felt with Mee^hao¡ and the unnamed New York nurse and surly young Tony Schrupp. After the World geneticists had done their work, Mee^hao¡ had explained it to him. Noah felt profound relief. He and Llaa^moh¡ shared a mitochondrial DNA group, but not a nuclear DNA one. They were not too genetically close to mate.

Of course, they could have had sex anyway; World had early, and without cultural shame or religious prejudice, discovered birth control. But for the first time in his life, Noah did not want just sex. He wanted to mate.

The miracle was that she did, too. Initially he feared that for her it was mere novelty: be the first Worlder to sleep with a Terran! But it was not. Just yesterday they had signed a five-year mating contract, followed by a lovely ceremony in the garden to which every single Worlder had come. Noah had never known exactly how many were aboard the Embassy; now he did. They had all danced with him, every single one, and also with her. Mee^hao¡ himself had pierced their right ears and hung from them the wedding silver, shaped like stylized versions of the small flowers that had once, very long ago, been the real thing.

“Is better,” Noah had said in his accented, still clumsy World. “We want not bunch of dead vegetation dangle from our ears.” At least, that's what he hoped he'd said. Everyone had laughed.

Noah reached out one finger to stroke Llaa^moh¡'s hair. A miracle, yes. A whole skyful of miracles, but none as much as this: Now he knew who he was and where he belonged and what he was going to do with his life.

His only regret was that his mother had not been at the mating ceremony. And—yes, forgiveness was in order here!—Elizabeth and Ryan, too. They had disparaged him his entire life and he would never see them again, but they were still his first family. Just not the one that any longer mattered.

Llaa^moh¡ stirred, woke, and reached for him.

MARIANNE

Robbie Chavez, recovered from
Respirovirus sporii
, gave so many blood and tissue samples that he joked he'd lost ten pounds without dieting. It wasn't much of a joke, but everyone laughed. Some of the laughter held hysteria.

Twenty-two people left aboard the
Embassy
. Why, Marianne sometimes wondered, had these twenty-two chosen to stay and work until the last possible second? Because the odds of finding anything that would affect the coming die-off were very low. They all knew that. Yet here they were, knowing they would die in this fantastically equipped, cut-off-from-the-world lab instead of with their families. Didn't any of them have families? Why were they still here?

Why was she?

No one discussed this. They discussed only work, which went on eighteen hours a day. Brief breaks for microwaved meals from the freezer. Briefer—not in actuality, but that's how it felt—for sleep.

The four people exposed to
R. sporii
worked outside the slammers; maintaining biosafety no longer seemed important. No one else became ill. Marianne relearned lab procedures she had not performed since grad school. Theoretical evolutionary biologists did not work as immunologists. She did now.

Every day, the team sent samples data to the Denebs. Every day, the Denebs gave thanks, and nothing else.

In July, eight-and-a-half months after they'd first been given the spores to work with, the scientists finally succeeded in growing the virus in a culture. There was a celebration of sorts. Harrison Rice produced a hoarded bottle of champagne.

“We'll be too drunk to work,” Marianne joked. She'd come to admire Harrison's unflagging cheerfulness.

“On one twenty-second of one bottle?” he said. “I don't think so.”

“Well, maybe not everyone drinks.”

Almost no one did. Marianne, Harrison, and Robbie Chavez drank the bottle. Culturing the virus, which should have been a victory, seemed to turn the irritable more irritable, the dour more dour. The tiny triumph underlined how little they had actually achieved. People began to turn strange. The unrelenting work, broken sleep, and constant tension created neuroses.

Penny Hodgson turned compulsive about the autoclave: It must be loaded just so, in just this order, and only odd numbers of tubes could be placed in the rack at one time. She flew into a rage when she discovered eight tubes, or twelve.

William Parker, Nobel Laureate in medicine, began to hum as he worked. Eighteen hours a day of humming. If told to stop, he did, and then unknowingly resumed a few minutes later. He could not carry a tune, and he liked lugubrious country and western tunes.

Marianne began to notice feet. Every few seconds, she glanced at the feet of others in the lab, checking that they still had them. Harrison's work boots, as if he tramped the forests of Hudson's Bay. Mark Wu's black oxfords. Penny's Nikes—did she think she'd be going for a run? Robbie's sandals. Ann's—

Stop it, Marianne
!

She couldn't.

They stopped sending samples and data to the Denebs and held their collective breath, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did.

Workboots, Oxfords, Nikes, sandals—

“I think,” Harrison said, “that I've found something.”

It was an unfamiliar protein in Marianne's blood. Did it have anything to do with the virus? They didn't know. Feverishly they set to work culturing it, sequencing it, photographing it, looking forward in everyone else. The protein was all they had.

It was August.

The outside world, with which they had no contact, had ceased to exist for them, even as they raced to save it.

Workboots—

Oxfords—

Sandals—

NOAH

Rain fell in the garden. Noah tilted his head to the artificial sky. He loved rainy afternoons, even if this was not really rain, nor afternoon. Soon he would experience the real thing.

Llaa^moh¡ came toward him through the dark, lush leaves open as welcoming hands. Noah was surprised; these important days she rarely left the lab. Too much to do.

She said, “Should not you be teaching?”

He wanted to say
I'm playing hooky
but had no idea what the idiom would be in Worldese. Instead he said, hoping he had the tenses right, “My students I will return at soon. Why you here? Something is wrong?”

“All is right.” She moved into his arms. Again Noah was surprised; Worlders did not touch sexually in public places, even public places temporarily empty. Others might come by, unmated others, and it was just as rude to display physical affection in front of those without it as to eat in front of anyone hungry.

“Llaa^moh¡—”

She whispered into his ear. Her words blended with the rain, with the rich flower scents, with the odor of wet dirt. Noah clutched her and began to cry.