“Can I come?”
“Sure.” As far as Cord was concerned, Clari could go anywhere he did. She was quiet, and she listened carefully, not like his pesky sister Kella, who interrupted everybody all the time.
The two children started toward the cottonwood stand by the creek, where a long time ago somebody had built a wide bench facing west. It was the prettiest place on the farm, the only place wildflowers bloomed often, even though the creek was only a trickle. Lillie sat there, gazing at the sky flaming red and gold above the long stretch of gray land. “There goes a jackrabbit,” Clari said, but Cord had more important things on his mind than jackrabbits.
“Hi, Cord, Clari,” Lillie said. “Look at that sky.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty. Mom—”
“It would be much prettier with rain clouds in it.”
“Sure. Mom, tell me about the pribir.” Cord flushed in embarrassment. He was demanding again, and anyway it never felt easy to talk to his mother.
But she tried to make it easy. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“Everything. I heard you talk about Andrews Air Force Base with Grandma. What’s an Air Force Base? Were the pribir there?”
“No. Sit down.”
Cord and Clari sat. The wooden bench felt smooth under his rump. Somewhere above him an owl hooted softly.
His mother began slowly, as if searching for the right words. “Andrews Air Force Base was—maybe is again—a big camp for soldiers and planes. After doctors discovered that Grandma and Dr. Wilkins and I were genetically engineered, we were taken there.”
“Why? How did they find out?”
“They found out because we all, all sixty of us, started to smell things. Smell information.”
Clari said timidly, “I don’t understand, Aunt Lillie.”
His mother smiled. “Well, that’s reasonable, because neither did we. All at once all of us just started to have… images in our head. Ideas and pictures and information, all about genetics. We were smelling special complex molecules that the pribir were secretly releasing into the air to send learning to humans on Earth.”
Cord demanded, “How come you kids could smell the molecules and no one else could?”
“We were genetically engineered to do it, before we were born, by a doctor working for the pribir.”
“Why didn’t the pribir just give humans the information themselves? Why use a bunch of kids?” Cord said logically. This roundabout transmission route seemed dumb.
“They didn’t want to risk coming to Earth. A lot of people didn’t like the idea of genetic engineering.”
Well, that made sense. As long as Cord could remember, he’d been told over and over to never mention genetics to anybody from Wenton.
“Also,” his mother continued, “the pribir had something else in mind. Eventually they sent a shuttle —a small spaceship—to pick up all the engineered kids who wanted to go up to the ship. Twenty of us went, including me. Your grandmother Theresa stayed behind.”
Clari asked, “Why did you go?”
His mother hesitated. “I’m not sure. I think partly for the adventure, partly because the pribir were making us smell molecules that made us want to go.”
Cord considered this. “They couldn’t be very strong molecules. Some people didn’t go. Like Grandma.”
“True.”
“What happened on the ship?” Cord said.
Again his mother hesitated. The colors in the western sky were fading now and the stars were coming out, one by one. Finally she said, “A lot happened on the ship. The main thing was that the pribir engineered the babies we girls were all pregnant with. Including you, Cord. They gave you many different genes. Dr. Wilkins thinks a lot of them are designed to let you survive on Earth no matter what changes the planet undergoes, or what environment you find yourself in.”
Like the sandstorm that had killed Grandma. Cord had been told how he’d survived that.
Clari said, “How many pribir were on the ship, Aunt Lillie?”
“Probably a lot. But we only saw two.”
Cord hadn’t known that. “Two? Only two? The whole time?”
“Only two.”
Clari breathed, “What did they look like?”
His mother smiled, but it wasn’t a good smile. “They looked exactly like us. They said they’d been made that way deliberately. Their names were Pam and Pete.”
Cord peered at his mother through the gloom to see if she was joking. She didn’t seem to be. But… “Pam” and “Pete”? Those were names on old, stupid Net shows, not names for pribir. He said harshly, “Then did the pribir put you back on Earth? Why?”
“We didn’t know. To have our babies here, I guess. But, Cord…” The longest hesitation yet. Cord waited. This was going to be important, he could tell from her voice. “Cord, you should probably know this. You’re old enough, and anyway I think Dr. Wilkins already told Bobby and the other kids that hang around with him. The last thing the pribir said to us was that they would be back.”
Cord sat very still. His mother put her arm around him, and for once he didn’t pull away. He hardly felt the arm. Gladness was flooding through him. They were coming back!
Clari said fearfully, “When?”
“We don’t know.”
“Soon, I want it to be soon!” Cord burst out.
His mother pulled her arm away. “Why?”
It seemed to Cord a stupid question. The pribir were clearly heroes, a word he’d learned in school software. They had tremendous powers… imagine sending information through smells! They had made all the kids at the farm, practically… why, without them he wouldn’t even exist! And they had saved his life by giving him the genes that had protected him during the sandstorm. More, they represented something Cord couldn’t name, didn’t have words for. He knew only that it was larger than the farm, the drought, the falling price of cattle that seemed to occupy the adults so much. Something large, and mysterious, and glorious.
But all he said to his mother was, “They’re wonderful!”
His mother’s voice turned cold. It was full dark now and Cord couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. That voice was enough.
“‘Wonderful’? You call it wonderful that they designed unborn babies with no regard to anything except pribir needs? That they kidnapped us kids and used smelled chemicals to manipulate our minds? That on the ship they made us… never mind that. That the pribir designed and engineered our babies and impregnated us without so much as asking permission, so that you and Keith and Kella and all the others never even had a recognizable father. You call that wonderful?”
Floundering under this attack, all Cord could think of to say was, “I don’t need a father! I have Uncle Jody and Uncle Spring and Uncle Rafe and—”
“Every child should have a father.”
“Clari doesn’t!”
Clari, who had shrunk against the cottonwood trunk at the first hint of conflict, nodded loyally.
“But Clari did have a father,” his mother said, more softly. “He just died before she was born. But she had him.”
If Clari’s father had been dead for Clari’s whole life, Cord didn’t see what good having a father had done her. Cord was angry now. “The pribir are wonderful! You just don’t understand!”
“Oh, Cord,” she said, and now her voice was completely soft, as soft as Clari’s. He was not going to be won that easily.
“You don’t understand, Mom. The pribir gave you everything, even me! And Keith and Kella!” He’d always known his mother didn’t really want her kids. Now here was proof.
“I know,” she said. “But, Cord, honey, they still did it through manipulation, tyranny, for their own reasons, not for our good.”
“I don’t care! Come on, Clari, the mosquitoes are out.”