Nancy Kress (23 page)

He charged patients according to what he learned about them on the Net. Often the fee was paid in welcome foodstuffs or livestock. As his reputation spread, Scott began to get rich people from the enclave outside of Ruidoso. Except for buying drugs, Scott turned every credit he made over to Theresa for the farm.

The crops flourished in the summer heat and new rain, despite the punishing daily wind and violent storms. The harvest was rich. Theresa was now beyond subsistence farming, and ten years ago that had been a glittering goal. The warming had killed billions of people, one way or another: geographic dislocation, epidemic diseases, political collapse, random violence. The war had killed billions more. But Theresa was going to have her best year ever.

Winners and losers,
she thought, and her mood did not improve.

At the beginning of October, Bonnie Carson and Julie Cunningham arrived back at the farm, brought by old Tom Carter from Wenton.

“Theresa, these girls would rather be with you,” Tom said, his ancient, pale blue eyes giving away nothing.

“Come in, Tom,” Theresa said. She stood in the cool dawn, already dressed, and bit off her questions until she was alone with the girls. You didn’t burden outsiders with family troubles.

“Got to get back,” Tom said.

Theresa glanced at the brightening sky. “You can’t now. Not in that open cart.”

“I’ll spend the day at the Graham place,” Tom said, not looking at her. The Grahams owned the next homestead; Tom could make it there before the punishing wind began. Theresa understood. Tom didn’t want to be around whatever was going to happen next any more than Theresa did. She, however, didn’t have a choice.

Julie helped Bonnie out of the back of the cart. Bonnie could hardly walk. She held her left arm cradled in her right. Her strong-planed face was covered with bruises, the lip split open. Jody, Theresa’s oldest son, appeared at her side, casually armed. When Tom had left, Julie quavered, “She was in a fight. She — “

“I can see she was in a fight,” Theresa snapped. “Bring her inside. Jody, go find Scott and tell him to bring his medical stuff. Julie, stop sniffling. Did Bonnie miscarry? Any show of blood?”

“I don’t think so,” Julie sniffed.

“I’m … okay,” Bonnie muttered.

Her arm was broken. Scott sedated Bonnie and set the arm. Bonnie lay on Lillie’s bed; God, they were going to have to jam two more beds in here somewhere. The farm house had only three small bedrooms. Theresa, Senni, and the two babies were in one; Rafe, Alex, Sam, and Scott in another; Lillie, Emily, and Sajelle in the third. Theresa’s sons, having ceded their mattresses to pregnant girls, now slept in the barn with the migrant laborers who drifted through. And there were no more extra mattresses. Well, Rafe or Alex or Sam, any two, could give up theirs. Although five mattresses would never fit in this tiny space …

She was pondering housekeeping to avoid thinking about anything else.

Scott frowned. “Bonnie will be fine. In fact, the break is already healing much faster than it should, and her injuries are much lighter than they should be for the kind of beating she took. The pribir did something to her, Tess. Boosted her immune system somehow.”

“Too bad they didn’t give her more muscles so she could have kicked the hell out of those bastards.”

Scott wasn’t listening. Probably he was running over medical possibilities in his head. Theresa went into the great room.

Fifteen people and two babies awaited her. Infant Clari nursed at Senni’s breast; little Dolly wandered around, whimpering for her breakfast. Sajelle got Dolly a piece of bread. Everybody else looked expectantly at Theresa.

“What?” she snapped. Irritation as cover for feeling burdened beyond bearing.

Jody spoke up. “Mom, we’ve been talking. Julie told us why that girl was beat up. She’s… somebody thought she liked girls instead of boys.” He said it with distaste, and Theresa sighed. Her children had grown up in a world they didn’t choose, a frightened world backsliding into protective conservatism. Not what she would have chosen for them, but there it was.

“All right, listen up,” she told everyone. “I don’t care if Bonnie likes boys, girls, or roadrunners, and that means nobody here is going to care, either. She’s one of us — “

Senni opened her mouth, closed it again, scowled.

“—because she was with me and the others at Andrews Air Force Base. I’ve told you about it, and that telling is all I need to do. I still run this place. Bonnie is a scared, pregnant kid, just like the others. She stays here. Julie, too. Now, is anybody going to fight me on this? Jody?”

“No.” Promptly. Bless her oldest, he had always been her ally. “Carlo?”

Hesitation. Carlo, she knew, dabbled in religion. Then, “No, Mom.”

“Spring?”

“Not at all.” Her sweet-tempered boy. “Senni?”

Senni said coldly, “You haven’t left much choice, have you? This hardly seems a time to bring in more dependents, with what happened on that farm near Hobbs. But naturally I’ll go along with whatever you say.”

“Good,” Theresa said. They were all nervous about the other farm, forty miles away. Its owners had disappeared from the Net, and Wenton rumor was that refugees had attacked, killing the owners. There was no law enforcement to check up on the farm, and so far no one else had either, probably from fear. The same thing had happened eighty miles east, in Texas, and there the investigating neighbors had also disappeared. Theresa said, “Now, about rooms — “

Spring interrupted her. “Mom, we need an extension on the house. Harvest is over. The herd is here for the winter—anyway, six more GPS collars broke and we can’t just keep track of the herd remotely any more, so they have to be here. Work is slack enough right now that Alex, Rafe, Sam, and I can build it in a week.” Alex and Rafe, both slight boys next to Theresa’s hulking sons, looked startled. Sam scowled. “All right?”

“Yes,” Theresa said, “good. Now let’s get breakfast.”

Five mothers-to-be, all carrying triplets. It was going to have be a hell of an extension.

For the first time since Madison’s death, she felt better.

Keith died two weeks later. Theresa, amazed that he had hung on this long, got the news on the Net. The computer had been moved into the new part of the building, which had four more tiny bedrooms and a smaller gathering room that Scott called grandly “the den.”

She found Lillie on her knees, weeding the winter herb garden in the relatively calm air after sunset. The girl, seven and a half months along, looked up over the massive curve of her belly.

“Lillie, should you be doing that?”

“Sure. I’m fine.”

“You look like a beach ball.”

Lillie laughed. Theresa could say things like that to Lillie. None of her own kids had ever seen a beach. Lillie’s morning sickness had ended after four months and, like the other five pregnant girls, she was healthy, strong, and active still.

“Lillie, I have something to tell you. It’s going to be hard. Your Uncle Keith died this morning.”

“I’m glad,” Lillie said simply.

Theresa stared at her, then slowly nodded. Lillie was right. Keith had been lingering too long in weakness and pain. And how like Lillie not to cry or wail, but to accept. Julie would have needed emotional attention for days.

Lillie said, “Do I need to do anything? Go to Amarillo?”

“No.” Funerals were simple now; you put the body in a sheet or box and buried it as soon as possible. Embalming, viewings, waterproof caskets, funeral directors… all gone. And by Theresa at least, not missed. “I made the arrangements on the Net.”

Lillie nodded. Sweat stuck tendrils of brown hair to her forehead and nape. The armpits of her maternity smock, a basic tent, were stained dark. Even in November the days, if not the nights, were warm. “I’d like to be alone for a bit, Tess. To walk out a ways.”

“Just don’t go too far.” Theresa would have Jody keep an eye on her.

Lillie hauled herself to her feet and waddled off, her bulky figure silhouetted against the fiery sky.

Theresa sighed and went to find Jody. Instead she found Spring and Julie, sitting in the seclusion of a drooping cottonwood tree. Julie’s head was nestled on Spring’s shoulder. He put his hand under her chin, lifted it, and kissed her.

Oh my dear Lord.

They hadn’t seen her. Theresa crept silently away. She hadn’t seen it coming. Not at all, not at all. Julie was heavily pregnant, and fourteen years old! Spring was twenty-four. And Julie, timid and weepy—why couldn’t Spring at least have chosen Lillie instead?

Theresa sat on the ground behind the barn and laughed at herself. A mother, choosing among pregnant fourteen-year-olds for her son! And it was inevitable that her boys choose somebody, sooner or later. Already she suspected Carlo was visiting a girl in Wenton. And for Spring, that tender-hearted rescuer of wounded rabbits and broken-winged birds, Julie was probably inevitable. Get used to it, Theresa.

It was full dark when she went back to the house, its candles gleaming through the small windows. Jody met her on the porch. “Where’s Lillie?”

Theresa felt her stomach sink. “Isn’t she here?”

“We thought she was with you.”

“No, I was going to … but I forgot because … she went for a walk, she said. Her Uncle Keith finally died, and she wanted to be alone.”

“Which way?”

“West. But you can’t…” Jody was already gone toward the barn to saddle his horse. A half moon, stars… all her boys could ride at night if they had to. Heart hammering, Theresa went inside.

How long?

They were back in an hour, Lillie seated on the horse, clutching the pommel desperately. Lillie, child of New York subways and a spaceship, had never learned to ride. Jody walked alongside, leading the horse. Theresa couldn’t help her image: Joseph and the pregnant Mary. None of her kids except Carlo would even recognize the icon.

“She’s fine,” Jody called. “But, Mom, we’ve got trouble.” Inside, he told them: a large band of refugees camped by the arroyo a mile to the west. Lillie had seen them before they’d seen her, and had caught the glint of moonlight on guns. She’d been starting back when Jody found her. He’d taken a closer look with night-vision binoculars.

“They have at least one shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Military, looks like. About thirty men and women, no kids that I saw. Military tents. This is no ragtag bunch of migrants, Mom.”

No. Theresa knew what it was. How had they escaped it this long, so many years, with the land growing more arable and desirable and prosperous? Dumb luck, she guessed.

She said quietly, “Lillie, take the other girls into the bedroom. You go, too, Sam and Alex and Rafe.”

“No,” Rafe said.

Theresa looked at him. She remembered him as a skinny, intrusive, intelligent nerd, and he still was. She almost tended to forget that he and Alex (but not Sam, noisy as ever) were around, so completely had they become her sons’ responsibility.

Rafe said, “We’re in this together. You said so over and over, Theresa. Whatever you’re going to do, tell us.”

“All right!” Theresa snapped. Rafe wasn’t the problem, anyway. Scott was.

She continued, “We have a few guns and ammunition and five people who can shoot. Nowhere near enough to stand against what Jody and Lillie saw. We’ve known that for a while. But we also have something else, something left over from before you came back, Rafe. A bioweapon.”

Scott jerked in his chair, rose to his feet.

“It’s an engineered virus,” Theresa said steadily. “Ten built-in replications after release before the terminator gene kicks in. Airborne. Lethal within five minutes.”

“Jesus God, Theresa!”

“Scott, don’t lecture me. Just don’t. I knew this day would come eventually, and when I had the chance to buy this stuff left over from the war, I did. I’m not letting all of you die because I’m too squeamish. That would be like being presented with a choice and choosing them to live, not us.”

Her knees trembled. Yes, she’d known this day would come, but she’d dreaded its coming, too. Thirty men and women … who would kill without any trembling. Remember that. At least there were no children with them. She hoped.

Theresa looked at the faces around the room. The rains had tapered off and the solar panels generated every clear day, but she tended to store the power or use it for farm needs. Candlelight flickered shadows around the room so that she saw a cheekbone here, a chin there. But it seemed to Theresa that she could see all their eyes, every pair. Shocked, frightened, impassive, angry.