Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (60 page)

“Hello, Noah Jenner,” the ceiling said. “I am Ambassador Smith. Welcome to the
Embassy
.”

“I—”

“I wanted to welcome you personally, but I cannot visit now. I have a meeting. Lisa will help you get settled here, should you choose to stay with us for a while. She will explain everything. Let me just say—”

Impossible to deny this man's sincerity, he meant every incredible word—

“—that I'm very glad you are here.”

After the alien left, Noah stood staring at the door through which he'd vanished. “What is it?” Dr. Guiterrez said. “You look a bit shocked.”

Noah blurted, “I know that man!” A second later he realized how dumb that sounded.

She said gently, “Let's go somewhere to talk, Noah. Somewhere less . . . wet.”

Water dripped from the sides of the submarine, and some had sloshed onto the floor. Sailors and officers crossed the gangway, talking quietly. Noah followed Lisa from the sub bay, down a side corridor, and into an office cluttered with charts, print-outs, coffee mugs, a laptop—such an ordinary looking place that it only heightened Noah's sense of unreality. She sat in an upholstered chair and motioned him to another. He remained standing.

She said, “I've seen this before, Noah. What you're experiencing, I mean, although usually it isn't as strong as you seem to be feeling it.”

“Seen what? And who are you, anyway? I want to talk to my mother!”

She studied him, and Noah had the impression she saw more than he wanted her to. She said, “I'm Dr. Lisa Guiterrez, as Ambassador Smith said. Call me Lisa. I'm a genetics counselor serving as the liaison between the ambassador and those people identified as belonging to his haplotype, L7, the one identified by your mother's research. Before this post, I worked with Dr. Barbara Formisano at Oxford, where I also introduced people who share the same haplotype. Over and over again I've seen a milder version of what you seem to be experiencing now—an unexpected sense of connection between those with an unbroken line of mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to their haplogroup clan mother. It—”

“That sounds like bullshit!”

“—is important to remember that the connection is purely symbolic. Similar cell metabolisms don't cause shared emotions. But—an important ‘but!'—symbols have a powerful effect on the human mind. Which in turn causes emotion.”

Noah said, “I had this feeling once before. About a strange woman, and I had no way of knowing if she's my ‘haplotype'!”

Lisa's gaze sharpened. She stood. “What woman? Where?”

“I don't know her name. Listen, I want to talk to my mother!”

“Talk to me first. Are you a sugarcane user, Noah?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Habitual use of sugarcane heightens certain imaginative and perceptual pathways in the brain. Ambassador Smith—well, let's set that aside for a moment. I think I know why you want to see your mother.”

Noah said, “Look, I don't want to be ruder than I've already been, but this isn't your business. Anything you want to say to me can wait until I see my mother.”

“All right. I can take you to her lab.”

It was a long walk. Noah took in very little of what they passed, but then, there was very little to take in. Endless white corridors, endless white doors. When they entered a lab, two people that Noah didn't know looked up curiously. Lisa said, “Dr. Jenner—”

The other woman gestured at a far door. Before she could speak, Noah flung the door open. His mother sat at a small table, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee she wasn't drinking. Her eyes widened.

Noah said, “Mom—why the fuck didn't you ever tell me I was adopted?”

MARIANNE

Evan and Marianne sat in his room, drinking sixteen-year-old single-malt Scotch. She seldom drank but knew that Evan often did. Nor had she ever gone before to his quarters in the Embassy, which were identical to hers: ten-foot square room with a bed, chest of drawers, small table, and two chairs. She sat on one of the straight-backed, utilitarian chairs while Evan lounged on the bed. Most of the scientists had brought with them a few items from home, but Evan's room was completely impersonal. No art, no framed family photos, no decorative pillows, not even a coffee mug or extra doughnut carried off from the cafeteria.

“You live like a monk,” Marianne said, immediately realizing how drunk she must be to say that. She took another sip of Scotch.

“Why didn't you ever tell him?” Evan said.

She put down her glass and pulled at the skin on her face. The skin felt distant, as if it belonged to somebody else.

“Oh, Evan, how to answer that? First Noah was too little to understand. Kyle and I adopted him in some sort of stupid effort to save the marriage. I wasn't thinking straight—living with an alcoholic will do that, you know. If there was one stupid B-movie scene of alcoholic and wife that we missed, I don't know what it was. Shouting, pleading, pouring away all the liquor in the house, looking for Kyle in bars at two a.m. . . . anyway. Then Kyle died and I was trying to deal with that and the kids and chasing tenure and there was just too much chaos and fragility to add another big revelation. Then somehow it got too late, because Noah would have asked why he hadn't been told before, and then somehow . . . it all just got away from me.”

“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 hadn't known 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 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 shore-side.”

“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 that 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 fisherman, 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, ‘clan.'”

“Nobody on Earth, anyway.”

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

“Not to us,” Evan said. “Marianne, go to bed. You're too tipsy, and we have work to do in the morning.”

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

“Nonetheless, it's work. Now go.”

NOAH

Noah stood in a corner of the 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.