All of it off the Net, Lillie thought. Copied from countless old shows that had as much relevance to their lives now as the tribal rituals of Hottentots. And as for relevance to the lives they would be living ten years from now…
She kept her mouth shut. This was what Dolly wanted. And apparently few others thought as she did. Scott, maybe. Emily. DeWayne. Maybe even Cord, although he would never say so. The others were caught up, or made themselves be caught up, in the artificial excitement. Even Senni had been smiling the last few days, as she changed endless diapers or tended the pots kept constantly boiling outside to launder them.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together…”
Pam and Pete had not been invited.
The night was lovely, clear and starry. Afterward everyone moved inside, escaping the insects, to eat and dance. No, Lillie thought, don’t play it! But they did. “Don’t matter none to me, never really did…”
One of the small houses had been cleared out for Martin and Dolly’s “honeymoon.” No other couple had had such a thing… but no other couple of Dolly’s generation had come together slowly, voluntarily, free of pribir-engineered sex triggered at a pribir-chosen time and physiologically allowing no delay.
The day after the wedding, neither Martin nor Dolly emerged from the house for breakfast. Lillie happened to catch Mike’s eyes. Something in her expression (What? She didn’t know how her face looked) made his gaze deepen. He didn’t look away. Lillie caught her breath. He was ready, then, enough over Hannah’s death. She smiled at him, and the smile made her feel fourteen again.
Later. Soon.
Dolly and Martin didn’t come to the big house for lunch, either.
“Something’s wrong,” Senni said to DeWayne. “I left some breakfast for them outside the door, and nobody touched it. This isn’t just sex. I don’t believe it.”
Senni knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she pushed it open. She screamed.
Why screams? Lillie thought irritably. All she saw was that Martin lay asleep on the bed and Dolly wasn’t there. Dolly could have been in the latrine, for all Senni knew. Senni never considered the reasonable explanation.
But Dolly wasn’t in the latrine, and Martin couldn’t be wakened.
“He’s breathing normally,” Emily said, after examining him. “Nothing has been damaged. He’s drugged. Did anybody find Dolly?”
“Jody and Spring are still looking.” But after an hour the news had spread and everyone was looking. Martin did not wake up.
Sam said grimly, “The fucking pribir have her. In their ship. And Martin’s knocked out with the same stuff we always were on the Flyer—you telling me you don’t remember?”
Lillie, along with the others, remembered.
She slipped away, to the pribir ship. It was undoubtedly impregnable, but that wouldn’t stop Sam and the others like him from assaulting it. Lillie wanted to get there first.
She stood on the ship’s far side, where she couldn’t be seen from the big house. “Pam. This is Lillie. I need to talk to you.”
Immediately Pam’s disembodied voice sounded through the ship wall. “What do you want, Lillie? I’m busy.”
“Pam, you can’t implant engineered embryos in Dolly and pretend she got pregnant by Martin last night. I mean, you can physically do it. But everyone knows what happened. Senni found Martin before he revived and before you could get Dolly back beside him. Everybody else will be up here soon.”
“So?” Pam said.
“Scott will abort the fetuses. Or Emily will. Dolly herself will insist on it.”
Silence. Lillie thought she’d lost, but then a door appeared in the ship and Pam erupted through it. “Abort? You mean she would destroy our embryos?”
“Of course she would, Pam,” Lillie said. She struggled to keep control of her tone. “Scott told you we don’t want it.”
“But we saw! With your lot! Once the babies are growing inside the females, they let them grow! And after they were born, they nurtured them anyway! We saw it right here on this farm! You and Bonnie and Emily and Julie and Sajelle, and in the next generation Felicity and Kella and Taneesha and Angie and—”
“You didn’t see everybody from the ship, did you, Pam? Jessica aborted her triplets, fifteen years ago. So did Madison, and she died of the abortion.” All the memories back, after so many years not thinking of them. Tess’s story of Madison lying ashen and dead in an Amarillo basement, her legs caked with blood.
“What’s wrong with you people!” Pam screamed. “You refuse the only thing that will save your species, you piss on the right way, you disgust me! All of you!”
“Give Dolly back,” Lillie said, and heard her own voice rise. “You can’t succeed with this. Not against our will.”
“You ungrateful, impotent, stupid stupid stupid—”
Pam was seized from behind and her arms pinned to her sides. Sam. And behind him, Alex and Cord.
Lillie said levelly, “Let her go, Sam.”
“It’s not a ‘her.’ It’s a fucking thing, and she’s not going to turn us into fucking things, too.” He pulled a knife from his belt.
Not real. None of this was real. She made her tone stay calm. “Sam, think. If you hurt her—if you even can hurt her—Pete is in the ship and has control of machinery we can’t even imagine. He’ll fry you right where you stand, and maybe the rest of us, too.”
Pam said, “Sam, you’re stupider even than the rest. You always were.” She flexed her arms and Sam went flying through the air, landing hard on the ground a few feet away. “Now, about Dolly and our embryos—”
Alex threw another knife. It hit Pam square in the back.
She gasped and fell forward, onto her knees. The humans stood frozen. Now, Lillie thought, now Pete would —now—
Pam collapsed and lay still, the knife still protruding from her back. The next moment Lillie fell to the ground. Her last thought was Not Cord! But it was too late.
She awoke in twilight, lying in the same spot on the ground, Cord and Sam and Alex around her like folded dolls. Lillie shook off as much grogginess as she could and crawled over to Cord. Breathing. He was alive.
She lay gasping, pushing the last of the drug out of her lungs, gulping in the sweet night air. A hawk soared overhead, oblivious. For a moment, it was limned against the rising moon. Lillie saw Pam sitting to one side on a sleek green chair molded to her body, watching her.
“Pam… Cord…”
“Oh, he’s all right,” Pam snapped. “See? It’s just as I told you. You humans take care of your young, once they’re born. Cord isn’t anything like you genetically, but you nurture him. Dolly would nurture her embryos, too.”
“Dolly? The others? Where—”
“Everybody’s perfectly fine. And thank you about asking after me, Lillie. I thought we were friends.”
Pam, too, looked fine. She stood, and the green chair dissolved, seeping into the soil. The last thing Pam looked like was a woman who’d taken a knife in the back.
Lillie sat up. “Pam, are you and Pete immortal?”
“Our genes are. So are yours, so are all genes, only the bodies that hold them change. Unless a species stupidly allows itself to become extinct, of course!”