Safeguard by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online

The uniformed military aide appeared at her elbow just as Katherine Taney rose from her gilded chair to enter the Oval Office. “The president will see you now,” his secretary said simultaneously with the aide's statement, “Wait a moment, Katie."
    She turned to stare at him. Keep the president waiting? But his face told. For a moment vertigo nearly took her, a swooping blackness, but only for a moment. She said quietly to the aide, “Another one?"
    "Two more. Possibly three."
    Dear God.
    "Ma'am,” chided the secretary, “the president is ready."
    She straightened her aging back, thought a quick prayer, and went to brief the commander-in-chief. No, not really to brief—to plead, with the war-battered United States government, for compassion in the face of the unthinkable.
* * * *
    In the beginning, Li remembered, there had been big faceless people, white as cartoons. These memories were quick and slippery, like dreams. The other children didn't have them at all. Since that time, there had been only the real cartoons, the world, and Taney.
    He had realized a long time ago that Taney was a person inside a white cartoon covering, and that he himself was a person inside the world, another covering. The world must also have an outside because when Taney left after each visit, she couldn't have stayed for days in the space behind the leaving door. The space was too small, not even room to lie down to sleep. And what would she eat or drink in there until she came back? And where did she get the fried cakes and other things she brought them?
    "There's another door, isn't there, Taney?” he said yet again as the five of them sat around the feeder in the Grove. The feeder had just brought up bowls of food, but no one except Sudie was eating them because Taney had brought a lot of fried cakes in a white bag. Sudie, always greedy, had eaten three fried cakes and half a bowl of stew and now slumped happily against a palm tree, her naked belly round and her lips greasy. Jana sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, her thin arms clasped around her legs. Kim stared at nothing.
    Li repeated, “Another door. You go out of the world through another door, don't you?"
    "I can't answer that,” Taney said, as always. The girls didn't even glance at her. Li didn't expect them to; he was the only one who ever questioned Taney.
    But tonight Jana, still gazing over her clasped knees at the shadow of trees against the sky, said, “Why can't you answer, Taney?"
    Taney's head swiveled toward Jana. It was hard to see Taney's eyes through the faceplate on her white covering; you had to get very close and squint. The cartoons covered like Taney didn't even have eyes, no matter how much you squinted at them.
    There hadn't been any new cartoons for a long while.
    Taney finally said, “I can't answer you, Jana, because the world keeps you safe."
    The old answer, the one they'd heard all their lives from Taney, from the cartoons. For the first time, Li challenged it. “How, Taney? How does the world keep us safe? Sudie still fell over that stone and you had to come and fix her arm. Jana ate that flower and all her food came out of her mouth.” The next day, all of that kind of flower, all over the world, had disappeared.
    Taney merely repeated, “The world keeps you safe."
    Sudie said suddenly from her place against the tree, “Your voice is sad, Taney."
    Jana said, “When will we get new cartoons?"
    But Taney was already getting to her feet, slow and heavy in her white covering. Even Kim knew what that meant. Kim climbed onto Taney's lap and started to lick frantically at Taney's face, and it took both Sudie and Li to pull her back. Kim was tall and strong. Taney said, as always, “Be well, dear hearts,” and started away.
    Li, clutching the screaming Kim, watched Taney walk the path between the trees until he couldn't see her anymore. The leaving door was in a big pink rock at the small end of the world, near the pond. Maybe tomorrow they