Nancy Kress (27 page)

Old Tom Carter, who used to run the storage building that was no longer needed. Rachel Monaghan, a woman Theresa’s age, who kept a cloth and clothing store. Lucy Tetrino from the train station. Bill Walewski, the grain buyer. Two hard-faced men she didn’t recognize. She saw Rachel’s lips purse at the sight of Carolina.

“Carolina,” Theresa said pleasantly, “take the babies down to Senni’s, please. Everyone, sit down anywhere you like.”

Carolina cast one frightened look at the Wenton delegation, then piled all three babies into a huge basket and hoisted it to her hip. She was much stronger than she looked. The children gurgled delightedly. Carolina hurried outside.

“My daughter-in-law, Jody’s wife,” Theresa said. A pre-emptive strike.

“So we heard,” Lucy Tetrino said, and from her tone Theresa knew that Wenton didn’t like having the Mexican girls and Juan here but that they weren’t the reason for this visit. The delegation scanned the great room, with its litter of baby clothes, leftover beans and rice on the table, guns high on the wall where the children couldn’t reach. The room smelled of candles and diapers and food and the vase of wild roses Sajelle had picked by the creek.

“Theresa,” Bill Walewski said, “I guess I better start, since I’m the new mayor of Wenton.”

“Congratulations,” Theresa said. She hadn’t even known there’d been an election.

“Thanks. The reason we’re here is that there’ve been some pretty strange rumors going around town about you this last year.”

“Really.” Bill didn’t meet her eyes. Whatever was going on, he wasn’t fully behind it.

“Yes. People are saying … people are wondering how you could have got all these teenage girls, all pregnant at the same time, all having twins or triplets or even quads. Pretty peculiar.”

“There are no quads,” Theresa said.

“But there are twins and triplets,” Lucy put in.

“Yes.” She didn’t explain that there would have been only triplets if one of Julie’s infants hadn’t died.

“Well, don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Lucy said.

“More than ‘weird,’” said one of the strangers. “It’s obscene,” and Theresa knew the source of the delegation.

“I’m afraid I didn’t get your name, sir.” Courtesy just this side of insolence.

“Matt Campion. I represent America Restored.” He didn’t smile.

Theresa said, “Restored to what?”

“To livability. To respect for the natural ecology of this great country. To decent acknowledgment of human limitations, so that we don’t destroy ourselves by mucking around with forces beyond our ability to understand or control.”

An anti-science league. Well, Wenton had escaped longer than many places. “I see.”

“I doubt it,” Campion said.

Old Tom said hastily, “We’ve all known you a long time, Theresa, and—”

“Yes, you have, Tom. Rachel, I’ve been buying cloth from you for sixteen years now. Bill, you’ve been buying grain from me for … how long?”

“Nine years,” Bill said unhappily.

“Right. And Lucy, we’ve ridden the train and shipped supplies on it since my husband and I came to this state.”

“None of that is relevant,” Campion said harshly. “We’re here to find out what’s going on at this farm, Ms. Romero. How come you have all these girls simultaneously giving birth to triplets?”

“That’s not hard to explain,” Theresa said. The explanation had been ready for a year. “You know that Dr. Wilkins boards here. We’re old friends, from before the war. After his wife died, he came here to practice because I told him there was no doctor anywhere around and he was both needed and could build a good practice here.”

“That’s true,” Tom put in, nodding vigorously. “Dr. Wilkins came about a year and a half ago.”

“Yes,” Theresa continued. “Before that, he practiced in Illinois. He did
pro bono
work there, too. One of his projects was a home for unwed mothers.” Briefly Theresa remembered the flamboyant, loose sexual atmosphere of her youth. All that had been swept away; homes for unwed mothers were plausible again. “The home was going to close. No credit. Five of the girls had no place to go. I said Scott could bring them here.”

“Why?” Campion demanded.

Theresa opened her eyes wide. “Humanitarian reasons, Mr. Campion. I’m sure any organization that, like yours, values decency and respect can understand humanitarian purposes.”

Rachel Monaghan narrowed her eyes, and Theresa told herself to watch it. Ruffling Campion wasn’t worth losing any lurking support from her long-time neighbors.

“So that explains why the girls came here,” said the other stranger. Quieter, milder, his expression gave away nothing. “But it doesn’t explain the multiple births.”

“No,” Theresa said.

“Well, what about that? Isn’t it a little unusual? I’m the Reverend James Beslor, incidentally.”

“How do you do. Yes, it is unusual. We were all surprised at so many babies.”

Campion said in exasperation, “Well, what caused it?”

“I have no idea,” Theresa said.

They all stared at her.

“Neither does Scott Wilkins. Nor the girls. Nobody even has a theory. All we know is that since the girls came to us pregnant, and my daughter hasn’t had twins or triplets, whatever happened didn’t happen on this farm. And, of course, the babies are all completely normal. You’re welcome to examine them, if you like.”

Campion said, “We most certainly want to do that.”

“Now? I can wake them up.”

“No, not now,” Campion said, flushing in annoyance. “When I get a doctor out here!”

“Any time that’s convenient,” Theresa said. Scott had assured her that no one short of a geneticist with expensive analyzers would find anything odd about the children, and it was unlikely this delegation could produce anything like that. Although, if this organization “America Restored” was big enough and funded well enough … she felt a thrill of fear.

Campion said slowly, “There’s something else going on here. There is. Even if those girls came to you pregnant and you had nothing to do with it, the girls are still
wrong.
Unnatural. Dangerous. We don’t ever want another repeat of the ecological disasters that almost destroyed us. Never again.”

Theresa made herself look bewildered. “I don’t know what more I can do, Mr. Campion. I’ve said you can examine the children, and their mothers, too, if you like. They’re just normal people. Statistical flukes do happen, you know, including multiple births. If you can’t prove anything else … I can tell that your belief in this country is too great to undermine the Constitutional requirement for proof before finding anyone guilty. Of anything.”

Campion looked at her with open dislike. But Lucy said eagerly, “It’s true, Matt. Theresa has agreed to cooperate completely, nothing happened here at the farm, and there’s not any proof anything wrong ever happened at all.”

“That’s so,” Tom said.

Theresa stood. “Can I get you some chicory coffee? Or sumac tea?”

Bill said abruptly, “Theresa, where did that fancy truck come from? The one Jody was driving the other day?”

“Oh, that was recently purchased in Amarillo by a new member of our farm co-op. DeWayne Freeman. He’s a Net developer, you should look him up. Impressive guy.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“He married another of our co-op members.”

Bill nodded, satisfied. Theresa showed them out. Matt Campion gave her a hard stare. When they were out the door, Theresa closed it and leaned against it, breathing hard.

The children were two, three, four. Nothing changed, everything changed. Carlo and his wife Rosalita left the farm, almost breaking Theresa’s heart. Carlo, ever restless, searching for something he couldn’t name, wanted to go to a religious community he’d heard about in Colorado. Theresa only hoped they would be back some day.

Sajelle had two children with DeWayne. Carolina and Jody had a son, Angel. Scott ran genome analyses on each child minutes after the birth. The results were always the same: the frontal lobe included the dense structure connected to the huge number of receptors in the nose. The genes were dominant. The babies would be able to smell information molecules, if anyone had been able to send them.

The genetically altered rice and hay flourished, although out of prudence Theresa insisted the entire crop be consumed on the farm rather than sold. Lillie was disappointed, but she managed production costs and quantities so well that the net savings to the farm was large. Lillie, and the others, turned sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one. Gradually Lillie began to share with Theresa and DeWayne the financial management of the farm, which Theresa had never enjoyed. The federal government resuscitated both itself and the income tax.

Lillie had grown lean, hard-bodied, briskly capable. She and Alex were the only two of the pribir kids who learned to ride. “Pribir kids” —it had been years since Theresa had thought that phrase. There was nothing about the farm that did not look and feel totally normal, except for the large number of children the same age. Everyone looked and acted no different from their neighbors.

Unless you counted Lillie’s attitude toward her children.

As the years rolled by, Theresa became more troubled by this. Lillie was kind to Cord, Keith, and Kella. It was the wary, impersonal kindness of a childless boarder. It reminded Theresa, as nothing else could, of the days at Andrews Air Force Base, when both she and Lillie had been on the receiving end of wary consideration from doctors and intelligence agents and security chiefs.

“It’s not right, Lillie. They need you.”

“I know it’s not right,” Lillie said with her habitual honesty. “But I can’t help it. Although they don’t need me while they have you and Carolina.”

“You’re their mother!”

“I know.”

“Cord, especially, needs you. Haven’t you seen how he follows you around, hoping for your attention?” Kella, Lillie’s daughter, had fastened herself onto Carolina. Keith seemed to have a temperament like Lillie’s, adventurous and self-sufficient. But the look in Cord’s eyes when they followed his mother tore at Theresa’s heart. The only time the little boy seemed happy was with Clari, Senni’s little girl. The two were inseparable. Just a few months apart in age, they shared secrets and games far more than did Cord and his siblings.

Lillie said, in a rare moment of overt emotion, “I can’t… can’t seem to love them, Tess.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know.”

Theresa gazed at Lillie. Theresa didn’t understand, wouldn’t ever understand. Cord—all the children—were beautiful, bright, good-natured. Sometimes Theresa felt guilty because she preferred Cord to her own blood granddaughter, Senni’s older girl, Dolly. Dolly was a whiner, and she had a selfish streak not shared by her younger sister, Clari. Cord was a wonderful child. How could Lillie not feel —

“I don’t know,” Lillie repeated and turned away, her face once more a composed, competent, pleasant mask.

The drought began in the summer of 2064.

At first, no one worried. For years the climate in southeast New Mexico had been improving, increasingly favorable for agriculture, ranching, and shade trees. The farm barely needed to irrigate anymore. Theresa and her “farm co-op” had learned to take their good luck for granted. They were in the right place, during the right years. In the vast planetary climatic lottery, they’d drawn a winning number.

However, after the drought had continued for an entire year, Theresa began to get nervous. The farm had been sustained through the year by savings, by DeWayne, and by good management. But the herd had been reduced in size and the harvest was largely a failure. If the land began to revert to its former aridity, both water and plant life drying up, she would be ruined. There were too many people, too many cows, too much diverse activity to go back to what the farm had been twenty years ago.

It was the same in other places, but not everywhere. With mixed feelings Theresa heard on Net news that the northeast coast, that part of it not under water, continued to rise in productivity, population, and malaria. The Canadian plains also continued to enjoy its gains of the last decades. But the southwest, along with large portions of China, were shifting in weather yet again.

International tensions with China again worsened.

Let it be temporary,
Theresa prayed to nothing. Not a dangerous shift, just a few bad years. Farmers and ranchers have always had bad years. Nothing new in that, nothing terrifying.