Nancy Kress by Nothing Human Read Free Book Online Page A

“
    “Enough,” Keith said. “I understand.”
    Which was probably the stupidest thing anyone had said all day. Of course he didn’t understand.
    He turned to face Dr. Asrani. “The names of all the children won’t stay secret long, you know. There have been too many medical people involved. Lillie and the other twenty kids — “
    “Eighty,” she interrupted him. “We have a fuller roster than Dr. Reeder.”
    “I’ll bet you do. Anyway, what do you recommend I do for Lillie? Bring her here?”
    “No,” she said, suddenly looking very tired. “Not here. If you want, you can take her to some friend or relative whom you can trust. But frankly, Keith, I don’t think it matters where you take her.
    “I’m afraid that before long, Lillie may be telling you where she has to go.”
     
    The first indication anyone had that the pribir did indeed exist came when they blew up SkyPower.
    Keith, not knowing what else to do with Lillie, brought her with him to Wolf, Pfeiffer. They arrived by 7:00. He told the hotshots already in and working that his niece had the day off from school and he would be taking her to lunch, so she would spend the day in his office. The assistants and associates looked askance, but he was a partner and nobody objected. The other partners didn’t notice. He installed her at his computer, where she promptly began manipulating software he didn’t know he had. She found games and programming languages and video feeds and settled in happily.
    He watched her a minute from the doorway before leaving for a meeting in the conference room. She sat facing away from him, absorbed in the computer. Her bright brown hair bounced on her shoulders. She wore a pale green sweater in a hideous style currently fashionable with teens, knitted with large holes on both shoulders and stuck all over with what looked to him like dangling yarn braids. Her shoulders, glimpsed through the weird holes, moved slightly as she used the keypad. He could hear her talking to the software in a low, musical voice.
    He went to his meeting.
    Twenty minutes later, a secretary opened the door, her face disapproving. “Mr. Anderson, your niece wants you. She says it’s an emergency.” Her tone said that in her opinion there was no emergency at all.
    Keith knew Lillie better than the secretary did. He bolted from the meeting.
    She stood in the middle of his office, her young face anxious but not frantic. “Uncle Keith, you have to tell all the people to get off SkyPower right away.”
    “What?” he said stupidly.
    “To get off SkyPower right away. It’s not the right way for us to go―”
    He stared at her.
    She had opened his office window the six possible inches mandated by the Sick Building Act of 2009. “Tell me from the beginning, Lillie.”
    She looked perplexed. “There isn’t any beginning. You have to just get all the people off SkyPower right away, before the pribir correct it. That’s not the way we should go. It damages genes.”
    “What do you mean, ‘correct it’?”
    She glanced out the window. “Make it go away. It damages the right way.”
    Keith said to his wall screen, “Oliver Wendell, turn on the TV to NewsNet.”
    ” — since eight o’clock this morning. Some of the children themselves have been calling SkyPower Corporation, news outlets such as this one, and the White House. No one knows what to make of this latest—”
    “Oliver Wendell, turn the TV off. Lillie … how do you know this?”
    She looked impatient. “The pribir told all of us, of course. There are people —they don’t know how many ― on SkyPower and the pribir don’t want to hurt them when they correct it. Genes are the right way, Uncle Keith, not power sources or chemicals that damage genes. So you have to get the people off, because the pribir will only wait a little while.”
    “How long?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. SkyPower is really a bad thing, you know. All the nuclear reactors are. They damage