Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online Page B

epidemiologist, not an immunologist, not a physician. There are many others who—”
    “Yes. We don’t want you to work on pathogens or with patients. We want you to identify human volunteers who belong to the haplogroup you discovered, L7.”
    Something icy slid along Marianne’s spine. “Why? There hasn’t been very much genetic drift between our . . . ah . . . groups of humans in just 150,000 years. And mitochondrial differentiation should play no part in—”
    “This is unconnected with the spores.”
    “What is it connected with?” Eugenics, master race, Nazis. . . .
    “This is purely a family matter.”
    Marianne glanced at Evan, who was writing furiously on the white paper bag that sushi had come in: GO! ACCEPT! ARE YOU DAFT? CHANCE OF A LIFETIME!
    She said, “A family matter?”
    “Yes. Family matters to us very much. Our whole society is organized around ancestral loyalty.”
    To Marianne’s knowledge, this was the first time the ambassador had ever said anything, to anyone, about how Deneb society was organized. Evan, who’d been holding the paper bag six inches from her face, snatched it back and wrote CHANCE OF SIX THOUSAND LIFETIMES!
    The number of generations since Mitochondrial Eve.
    Smith continued, “I would like you to put together a small team of three or four people. Lab facilities will be provided, and volunteers will provide tissue samples. The UN has been very helpful. Please assemble your team on Tuesday at your current location and someone will come to escort you. Do you accept this post?”
    “Tuesday? That’s only—”
    “Do you accept this post?”
    “I . . . yes.”
    “Good. Good-bye.”
    Evan said, “Marianne—”
    “Yes, of course, you’re part of the ‘team.’ God, none of this is real.”
    “Thank you, thank you!”
    “Don’t burble, Evan. We need two lab techs. How can they have facilities ready by Tuesday? It isn’t possible.”
    “Or so we think,” Evan said.

    NOAH
    It hadn’t been possible to stay in the apartment. His mother had the TV on nonstop, every last news show, no matter how demented, that discussed the aliens or their science. Elizabeth burst in and out again, perpetually angry at everything she didn’t like in the world, which included the Denebs. The two women argued at the top of their lungs, which didn’t seem to bother either of them at anything but an intellectual level, but which left Noah unable to eat anything without nausea or sleep without nightmares or walk around without knots in his guts.
    He found a room in a cheap boardinghouse, and a job washing dishes, paid under the counter, in a taco place. Even though the tacos came filmed with grease, he could digest better here than at Elizabeth’s, and anyway he didn’t eat much. His wages went on sugarcane.
    He became in turn an observant child, a tough loner, a pensive loner, a friendly panhandler. Sugarcane made him, variously, mute or extroverted or gloomy or awed or confident. But none of it was as satisfying as it once had been. Even when he was someone else, he was still aware of being Noah. That had not happened before. The door out of himself stayed ajar. Increasing the dose didn’t help.
    Two weeks after he’d left Elizabeth’s, he strolled on his afternoon off down to Battery Park. The late October afternoon was unseasonably warm, lightly overcast, filled with autumn leaves and chrysanthemums and balloon sellers. Tourists strolled the park, sitting on the benches lining the promenade, feeding the pigeons, touring Clinton Castle. Noah stood for a long time leaning on the railing above the harbor, and so witnessed the miracle.
    “It’s happening! Now!” someone shouted.
    What was happening? Noah didn’t know, but evidently someone did because people came running from all directions. Noah would have been jostled and squeezed from his place at the railing if he hadn’t gripped it with both hands. People stood on the benches; teenagers shimmied up the lamp poles. Figures