Nancy Kress - Maximum Light

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Maximum Light

It is only a few decades into the future. Humanity’s ability to conceive children has been severely reduced

by pollution and disease. Kids are scarce and desirable, adoption is almost impossible. Three people are

entangled in a life-threatening web. A teenage girl sees something shocking and illegal but is disciplined and

told she is a liar. She goes to an elderly doctor, the only one who suspects she might be telling the truth.

And a man wakes up one morning calmed by a drug that helps edit unpleasant memories. . .but with his

testicles gone…

Praise for Maximum Light

"You'll like this book because it's about you, and scary. As for me, I just caught myself thinking of it as

Maximum Hope. Nancy Kress comprehends the grimy will too, if only enough of us read her. Too soon it

cannot be."

—Gene Wolfe

"Maximum Light is complex and more than a little scary, but hope eventually springs forth."

—San Diego Union-Tribune

"Real characters dealing with real technology in a real society—and a crackling plot."

—David Drake

"A marvelous novel; Maximum Light isn't just an enthralling book, it's also an important one—Silent

Spring for the new millennium. In the best tradition of bells that we all must hear; read this book before it's

too late."

—Robert J. Sawyer

"Kress is an expert at realistically looking at how we might alter our species in exciting and interesting

books. She brings original, diverse characters together to explore these important issues."

—The Denver Post Also by Nancy Kress NOVELS

The Prince of Morning Bells

The White Pipes

The Golden Grove

An Alien Light

Brain Rose

Beggars in Spain

Beggars and Choosers

Oaths and Miracles

Beggars Ride

Stinger

STORY COLLECTIONS

Trinity and Other Stories

The Aliens of Earth

Beaker's Dozen

MAXIMUM LIGHT

NANCY KRESS

TOR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

For Charles, sitting and talking and wrangling

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as

"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped

book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously."

MAXIMUM LIGHT

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue m New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-54037-9 .

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 97-29850

First edition: January 1998

First mass market edition: January 1999

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

For all we have and are, For all our children's fate, Stand up and take the war.

—Rudyard Kipling

The gods

Visit the sins, of the fathers upon the children.

—Euripides

MAXIMUM LIGHT

SHANA WALDERS

By the time they truck us to the staging area, which is the parking lot of some old church, the train has been

burning for two days. It's one of those new Korean maglevs that isn't supposed to derail ever, no matter

what, but there it is in some D.C. suburb, burning like a son-of-a-bitch. Carrying some sort of fuel canisters;

somebody says that it could burn for a week if the scientist-types don't figure out what to do. Which I guess

they haven't, because the area is evacuated and glow-marked, and we jump off the truck a couple thousand

feet away from the wreck. Other trucks are bringing in civvies, some of them crying.

"You have entered an area electronically cordoned by the United States Army," the truck is saying over

and over. "Unless you are authorized to be in this area, turn around immediately and leave. You have

entered an area electronically—" My NS sergeant reaches into the cab and slaps it off. She goes to report

in to a regular-army sergeant, so I sort of slouch over to a soldier and say, "On. What we got?"

He gives me that look they all do, the

Who-let-you-put-on-auniform-and-by-the-way-you’re-not-real-army-anyway-asshole look. But I

ignore that and repeat, "What we got here?" and this time I smile at him, the just-a-hint-of-promise smile,

and he don't resist. They never do. I'm a gorgeous kid.

"We're taking the evacuees back in, in twos. For their pets."

"Their pets?"

"Yeah, sweetheart. The army's just one compassionate subrun." He laughs, but I don't get the joke.

They got a lot of jokes like that, the regulars do, to keep us NSs on the outside. I don't care. We're going in.

"Got your adrenalin up, huh?" the soldier says. "Your little titties erect?" They're not supposed to talk

like that to us—such fragile youngsters like us, just doing the year of National Service we owe our

country—but I don't care. I can handle soldiers. And my titties are anything but little.

I laugh, and the soldier moves closer. His eyes gleam. He isn't that old, and not bad looking, but I'm not

in the mood. We're going in.

"Shana," my sergeant calls, "over here. You and Joe hand out gear, help the civilians put it on. Send

them by twos over there."

"On. You aren't keeping me here, are you?" I say. "Instead of going in?"

The sergeant sighs. They handle us with velvet gloves in the NS, not like at all like the rough stuff in the

real army. We're a precious resource, after all, us kids. Fewer of us every year, what with the fertility

crisis. It's all right by me. I smile at my sergeant. That smile.

"Oh, all right, you can go in," she says. "But first get some of these people in gear. Fall to."

I fall to, shouting at Joe to bring over two civvies, pulling two hazard suits off the back of the supply

truck. The civilians are old, of course, but not real feeble fusties, probably no more than fifty. They climb

into the suits with no trouble. The woman, though, don't want to put the helmet on. A lot of people are like

that, scared to seal off their heads. Even some NSs. She stands with her gray hair—she don't dye it, God

knows why not, I sure would—blowing into her eyes, which are red and swollen.

"It's my cat," she says, almost like she's apologizing to me. "Widdy. Short for Kitty-Widdy,

embarrassing as that is." She smiles at me, almost begging. For what? I don't know her cat from dogshit.

"Please put on the helmet, ma'am," I say. I'm getting a real kick out of sounding in charge, even if I'm

really not.

"When I left the house to go shopping, Widdy only had a little water left in her bowl," the woman

pleads. "And that was two days ago!"

"Yes, ma'am. Please put on the helmet."

"I was out shopping. I wasn't even at home when the train derailed!"

"Yes, ma'am. The helmet, ma'am."

"I. . . can't."

"Then please remove your suit, ma'am, so someone else can wear it to rescue their pet." I'm making

this up as I go along. I love it.

"I . . . can't. What about Widdy?" She looks wildly around, like maybe there's somebody else to go

rescue Widdy. I guess she don't see nobody, because suddenly she jams the helmet over her head. I reach

out and seal it for her. Behind the faceplate, she's crying.

I hope I never get that scared of life.

I point toward the regular army, and she shuffles off in that direction. Joe and I pull two more sets of

gear off the truck and the sergeant sends another two civvies shuffling toward us. This time they are moldy

oldies, barely strong enough to pull on the damn suits. All around the church parking lot, NS teams are

suiting up civvies. I watch carefully, the whole procedure, to be sure I know how to work it so I actually get

sent in. I'm holding my sergeant to her promise.

Hanging over the parking lot is a huge holosign with the usual government garbage: SHARED

RESPONSIBILITY: TOGETHER WE STAND. Shimmery holo people of all different ages, holding hands

and smiling at each other like morons. Suddenly thick clouds of black smoke blow in our direction, blotting

out the sign. I don't put on my helmet unless I absolutely have to—I'd rather soak it all in undigitalized—but

for a moment I can't see the signs, the trucks, the civvies, the fancy stained-glass window in the front of the

church, with its blue and red figures of some ancient saints older than rocks. The smell is awful—like

burning tires mixed with rotted garbage. Then the wind shifts and the smoke blows in the other direction.

I don't get to go in until afternoon. They let the regular army do it for hours, truckload after truckload of

civvies, probably to be sure it's safe for us precious little NSs. Us kids have to do a year of National Service

to learn selfless dedication to the good of the group, blah blah, but nobody wants us to get killed. By noon,

when nobody's been blown up and the eight regular soldiers are due for rotating breaks, they let us have a

turn. I'm right there with the first bunch.

I'm paired with a soldier who, behind his faceplate, looks in his forties or fifties, a career soldier, all

business. We jump in the back of a truck with eighteen suited, scared civvies all thinking about their dogs

and cats and parakeets. The truck rumbles along toward the burning wreck.

The soldier briefs me. "Nobody goes in closer than eight hundred feet. Nobody. This lot swore they all

lived farther away than that, but they could be lying. You escort your charge in and out of the house. They

get four minutes, you time it. Grab the pet and out. Nothing else, this is just about pets. If they can't grab

their animal in four minutes, out anyway. By force, if you have to. They even teach you kids to use your

stun gun?"

"Yes, sir," I say, ignoring the insult.

"Just the pets," he repeats. "No money, pictures, terminals, furniture, jewelry. And don't fucking get

yourself injured."

"No, sir." I flash him a big smile. He stares at me a minute, then looks away, his mouth twisted in

disgust. I don't care. I'm too damn happy.

The smoke gets worse, and pretty soon we can see flames. That train is burning like the hell the

preacher used to try to tell us about, when I was in the government school. Another glow marker, waist

high, with the field set to bright yellow, snakes along eight hundred feet from the maglev track. The houses

beyond the marker are standing, all right, but I wouldn't bet much on that if any fuel canisters blew. What is

that stuff, anyway? Probably some long unpronounceable name only stewdees would care about.

We stop about a hundred feet from the marker. Eighteen civvies, three soldiers, three NSs. The

sergeant gets the first six civvies off the truck and running toward houses, each civvy with a soldier or NS.

Some of the civvies could barely shamble along. My civvy is never going to win any marathons, but he

moves pretty fast for a mosstooth. I trot along beside him, parallel to the marker glow. Other pairs

disappear into the smoke in other directions, or into houses, which are the little row-jobbies you get in places

like this. I see one soldier-with-civvy come out almost immediately, followed by a big dog barking its fool

head off with doggie joy.

We trot on. And on. Where does this guy live? We're almost at the end of the houses. Beyond are just

big gray windowless buildings, warehouses or factories or something. There wouldn't be any pets in those.

Would there?

All of a sudden the civvy puts on a big burst of speed. Son of a bitch! He's away from me before I can

get out my stun gun, which I hadn't been expecting to even need. Not to rescue a fucking kitty! The

mosstooth races away from me and right through the glow marker. When I follow him through, there's a

brief burst of pain in my chest, but nothing my suit can't handle. We're inside the explosion zone. I'm gaining

on him, but not by much, when he runs into the nearest big gray building.

And locks the door behind him.

I waste precious seconds pounding on it like some kind of stewdee. Then I run around the outside of

the building. In the back is a loading dock, but it's locked, too. So is the emergency exit. How come these

people had time to lock everything up tighter than a religious virgin?

Then I see my guy running out of a little side door. He don't expect to see me, clearly, since he almost

runs into me. Which is how I get a good look at what he's carrying in his arms.

And I don't even draw my stun gun. I'm the one stunned. It's like I can't even move.

Until I realize what's going to happen next. Has to be. The guy has already disappeared into the

smoke—he knows where he's going, all right, and how much time he has to get there. I don't. But I start

running for everything I'm worth, away from the windowless building, and every second I'm farther away is

a gift, a present, a fucking miracle. Another second I'm alive.

The building blows.

I dive behind somebody's brick barbecue—by this time I'm back among the houses—and crawl inside.

It's got a metal cover to keep rain off the grill, because the grill is jammed with terra cotta dishes and

wooden spoons and shit for cooking. The terra cotta shatters and rains down on me, but otherwise I'm

okay. I cover my head and wait and, sure enough, the building explosion ignites the closest of the train cars

and it blows, too.

Poisons. Toxins. Radiation? What is the stuff in those canisters?

I don't know and it wouldn't help me if I did. I'm screaming my throat raw until I notice and make

myself stop it. The noise all around me is like the end of the world. The black smoke makes it impossible to

see my own knees, even though I'm crouched so that my face is jammed up against them. I'm pretty sure

I'm going to die. If all the train cars blow, I'm probably going to die.

But they don't, and I don't.

From the sound, only one car ignites, and I ran away from that direction. I can't remember if I ran back

through the glow marker, out of the explosion zone. I didn't feel no marker. I don't feel nothing for a few

more minutes, except the fact that I'm fucking alive. Then I crawl out of the barbecue pit and stand,

wobbly.

My helmet switched itself to virtual vision, for better resolution. Around me it looks like a war movie,

something from the action in South America. Houses burning, houses fallen down. The gray building just

isn't there no more. Only rubble, and smoke, and noise that rings in my ears like it was far away instead of

practically on top of me.

I wobble my way between the fires and back toward the staging area. Somewhere I've lost my

direction because I approach the church parking lot sideways, from between two houses on its east side.

The parking lot don't even look real.

Old people everywhere, some still in suits without helmets, some out of suits, everybody smeared with

soot so you can't tell if they're black or white or purple. And pets. A dead cat lying on the pavement, with a

woman wailing over it, tears streaming through the wrinkles on her face. A live puppy, one foot crushed but

wagging its tail like Christmas morning, while another rusty fusty cries over it. A big Labrador retriever

racing around in circles, barking and barking. Cats spitting at the Lab. Vets with medical scanners

crouching over dogs. A geezer holding an empty dog dish, just standing there gazing at it, never moving a

muscle. The regular army soldiers trying to load the civvies back onto trucks: "It's not safe here, sir. Get on

the truck immediately. Leave the dead animal, please—"

Nobody listens. Vid crews maneuver their robocams, people wail and shout. And closest to my side of

the parking lot, a huge sooty parrot digs wicked claws into the shoulder of a grinning man who don't even

wince, the bird squawking over and over, "Access granted. Here we go! Access granted. Here we go!

Access granted—" And in the distance but coming closer, the scream of more fire-fighters and equipment

arriving by air.

My sergeant spots me. She's crossing the parking lot at double time, and she glimpses me between the

buildings and stops dead. Her face changes completely, and I know what I'm looking at. Relief. She thought

I was dead, and that she was the one who lost a precious NS, and that she would have to pay for that real

hard and real long. Only here I am, alive. Never mind that no civvy isn't with me— the civvy isn't nineteen

years old and a national resource.

"Walders!" she snaps at me, and I know just how upset-relieved she is. Usually they call us by our first

names. "Report in!"

And I do. I wobble forward, on knees made of water, and not because I almost died. Not because I lost

my civvy, either, and fucked up the first hazardous-duty NS assignment I ever got. My knees wobble

because I have to report in, a full report, including exactly what I saw the running civvy carry away with

him. And I don't know, can't even imagine, what will happen to me after that.

NICK CLEMENTI

It's the same dream. I sit beside my mother by the duck pond, throwing our lunch to the ducks. "See, Nicky,

the babies swimming behind their mommies! If we were duckies, you'd swim right behind me and Jennifer

and Allen." "I want to swim in front of Jen'ver and Allen!" I say, and my mother laughs. She is very young

herself, and beautiful, sitting barefoot on the grass. The ducks fight over the bits of peanut-butter-and-jelly,

and quack and shrill and shriek and become my wrister.

I rolled over in bed and said, "Reception."

"A call, Dr. Clementi," said the MedCenter computer in its pleasant, androgynous voice. "Code Four.

Mrs. Paula Schaeffer. Complaints are tingling in left leg, lethargy, irritability. Instructions, please?"

"Schedule a visit in the morning," I said, probably as irritably as the would-be patient. If the computer

decided the call was a Code Four, it could wait. Tingling in the leg could be anything, was probably nothing.

Lethargy, irritability—Mrs. Schaeffer always had those, as far as I could see. She was eighty-seven years

old, for God's sake, and it was two o'clock in the morning. Did she expect to be dancing a jig and planning a

party? But they were all afraid everything meant a stroke.

The wrister had woken Maggie. "Nick? Do you have to go out?"

"No. Just another Fretful Fossil." Our private name for them—even though we ourselves were both in

our mid-seventies. Or maybe because. Joke about it, taste it, get used to it in small silly references to other

people, and it will be easier to live with. Mithridates, he died old.

Maggie rolled to nestle, spoon-fashion, against my back. Buttons on her nightdress poked into my skin.

"Your clothing is attacking me again."

"Sorry, love." She shifted position.

"Not good enough. Take it off."

"You're a dirty old man, Nick." And then, "Nick?"

It was going to be a good one, a hard one. I could feel it.

She was light and sweet in my arms. In her forties and fifties Maggie had gained weight, a hot exciting

cushion underneath me, but in her sixties and seventies it had all come off again, and I could feel her

delicate bones. And that fragrance—Maggie always had a fragrance to her, a unique odor, when she was

ready. She was ready now. Her thin arms tightened around me, and I slid in, and it was indeed one of the

good ones.

"Oh, nice, nice," Maggie said, as she had said for fifty-one years now.

"I love you, Maggie."

"Uhmmmmmmm . . . oh, yes, Nick, just like that."

She always knew what she wanted. For fifty-one years, I've been grateful it was me.

Afterward, the wrister rang again. Maggie dozed, one leg flung over mine, a stray white curl tickling my

nose. I must have slept, too; morning light filtered through the curtains. Maggie woke and shifted. "Damn it,

why can't they let you sleep? Don't answer it; it's probably just a tingling in Paula Schaeffer's other leg."

"Unlike what's tingling on you," I teased.

"Don't answer it, Nick."

"Reception," I said to the wrister.

"Probably a tingling in Paula Schaeffer's eyelashes."

But it wasn't. It was Jan Suleiman, clerk for the Committee, and a long time friend. Often Jan made

sure I heard things some people would prefer I not hear. I listened, and slowly sat up, staring into the

darkness across our bedroom.

"Nick?" Maggie said. "What is it?"

When the call was finished, I told her. I always told Maggie everything, even things I should not. She

was absolutely trustworthy. I told her about my remaining patients, about the economic struggles of the

Doctors for Humanity Volunteer MedCenter, about the political struggles at the Congressional Advisory

Committee for Medical Crises. There was only one thing I hadn't told her yet, and I would, when the time

was right. So now I repeated to her what had been allegedly seen yesterday, in the maglev explosion

northeast of the city, in Lanham. Then I held her for a long minute before getting up, and dressing, and

calling a car for the ride from Bethesda to the Hill.

The permanent Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises met in an anonymous and

unpretentious office building. There were good reasons for this. First, there were so many Congressional

Advisory Committees in these days of perpetual crisis that the government buildings were always full of

anxious huddles of legislators, scientists, lobbyists, military officers, bureaucrats, toxicologists, industrialists,

educators, doctors, economists, and activists. But an anonymous office building was also less likely to be

watched by the press, whose involvement would be premature at this point. Everybody thought so, except

me. I thought the press was long overdue.

Still, I could see the other committee members' point: much of the press still dealt in inflammation and

hysteria, especially about the aftermath of the Tipping Point. They had a lot to answer for, although they

probably never will. But the main reason for the anonymous office building was the secret tunnel system

from the anonymous parking garage two blocks away.

They built for secrecy a decade ago, when they could afford to build at all. Well, they had to. It was

right in the middle of the Tipping Point, when the looming financial crisis of the US government wasn't

merely looming any more, and the slow worldwide decline in viable sperm suddenly wasn't slow anymore,

and the backlash against genetic engineering weren't just theoretical anymore, and the coming bankruptcy

of elderly entitlements wasn't just coming anymore: it was all here. Along with the riots and the tax

rebellions and the genetic laws and the entire destructive chaos of the Tipping Point, those two painful years

before the president used martial law to restore order. A lot of otherwise unreticent people don't say what

they did during those two years. In Washington, some of them used secret tunnels to do it.

A few blocks before the parking garage, I saw the child. This wasn't a good part of Washington, which

had so few good parts left. Litter blew between the buildings, some of which had burned down, more of

which were boarded up. The May night had been mild, and old people slept on sidewalks and fire escapes

and in doorways, wrapped in coats and blankets. It was a city of the elderly—like practically every other

city.

One in four Americans was over seventy. There were only 1.4 taxpaying workers to support each

"retiree," even with the wretched non-living-level subsidies most elderly received. The number of "very

senior citizens," those over eighty-five, had quadrupled in the last fifty years. The global birthrate was less

than twenty percent of what it had been a century ago. In some countries it had dropped to five percent. In

the relative absence of children, the world had grown old.

We drove past the huddled sleeping forms. Past the holosigns, the most visible aspect of Project Patriot,

bright cavorting shadows whose captions urged SHARED RESPONSIBILITY and THE SOCIAL

CONTRACT = YOUR GUARANTEE OF A GOOD FUTURE! Past the broken bottles and drug

discards and human shit—the usual. Plus, of course, the rats, bolder and more aggressive than rats had ever

been in the entire history of man. I knew why, but the committee wouldn't let me tell them.

And in the middle of the early-morning street, dressed only in a pink tunic, a brown-skinned toddler with

huge dark eyes and long black hair topped with a crisp pink ribbon.

"Stop the car," I said to the driver, who was already screeching to a halt, as startled as I was. This did

not happen. Washington was at the bottom of America's regional variation curves in sperm count—the

bottom for motility and normalcy and volume—and thus for birth rate. Artificial conception, in all its

varieties, was still too expensive for most couples, now that the health insurance industry had crashed. And

cloning, which had once seemed the hope of the world, had turned into a bitter joke.

You could clone worms, frogs, sheep, elephants. But not humans. A cloned, unfertilized human egg

obediently divided five times, into thirty-two cells. And then it went on dividing, instead of first gastrulating

in the first of the many crucial folds that lead to cell differentiation. In cloned eggs, no cell differentiation

occurred. Ever. You ended up not with bone cells and skin cells and muscle cells but with a monstrous ball

of cells all the same, the homogenous mass growing more and more huge until somebody killed it.

Researchers attributed this to subtle disruption of the embryo's chemical polarity gradients, although nobody

had yet figured out the exact mechanism. They only knew the results. Cloning could not provide the infants

the world craved.

And so children were scarce and precious; they were not allowed to turn up half-naked and alone in the

middle of filthy streets. Especially not children with no visible birth defects. There were a great many

infertile couples who would kill for this little girl.

She looked up at me without fear, and put two fingers in her mouth.

"Hello," I said, through the powered-down window. Beside me, the driver drew his gun. Children as bait

were not unknown to the truly desperate. "What's your name?"

"Rosaria," she said around the two fingers, and started to cry. I got out of the car.

"Why are you crying, Rosaria?"

"Abuela didn't dress me." She lifted the edge of her tunic to show me her naked legs and genitals.

Hastily I pushed the cloth back down again. If this got caught on robocam . . . HILL SCIENTIST

CAUGHT MOLESTING CHILD.

"Where's Abuela now, Rosaria?"

She pointed down a side street. The driver said, "Sir . . . I can call Child Protection. . ."

"Do that. And the cops." But meanwhile Rosaria was tugging on my hand and crying. "Rosaria, we

have to wait for some people to come before we find Abuela."

"Abuela fall on the floor!"

I was a doctor. I went with her.

She led me a short way down the nearest side street. SHARE RESPONSIBILITY advised the building

graffiti, along with FUCK RESPONSIBILITY! My driver stayed behind, talking on his wrister. I held the

child's small hand as we climbed filthy, crumbling steps, through an apartment-house door half off its hinges,

up a flight of stairs reeking of garlic and despair. The staircase wasn't equipped with even common

reinforced railings and non-skid treads, let alone the aid-summoning sensory monitors that were guardian

angels to the elderly rich. At the top of the stairs were three apartment doors, one wide open. Inside, an

elderly Hispanic woman lay on the clean floor, between two carefully darned chairs that had once been

bright red. One look at her and I knew I was too late. Myocardial infarction, or burst aneurysm, or any of a

dozen other causes of death common to the very old. In her hand she held Rosaria's pink tights.

I knelt before the child. "Rosaria . . . Abuela's dead. She's not in that body anymore. Do you

understand?"

She nodded, although of course she couldn't understand. But she had stopped crying. Her big dark eyes

were very soft, like the fur of black kittens. From behind the red chair she plucked a Grandma Ann doll, one

of the toys distributed as part of Project Patriot. The young must be taught early to embrace the old.

Rosaria clutched the doll tightly.

"Sweetheart, who else lives with—"

"Aaeeehhhaaaeeee!" A cry of anguish from a huge Hispanic woman hurtling through the door.

"Abuelita! Aaeeehhhaaaeee!"

I stood up and stepped back.

The woman, who looked in only her early twenties, collapsed beside her dead grandmother and began

wailing. She wore factory coveralls, stitched DONOVAN ELECTRONICS. After a few moments, I put a

hand on her shoulder. "Ma'am. . ."

To my surprise, she leapt up from the body and whirled on me.

"Who you? What you doing here?"

"I'm a doctor. I found Rosaria wandering in the street; she said her abuela had been dressing her. . ."

"In the street? You took her in the street?"

"No, I . . . she came out by herself. After your grandmother—great-grandmother?—collapsed, I

presume. I was—"

"You wasn't doing nothing! You hear me? We're just fine without no Child Protection!"

"I'm not from Child Protection. I—"

"You just leave us alone!"

She took a step toward me. Her eyes blazed with hatred. She was as tall as I was, twenty pounds

heavier, and fifty years younger. I stepped back.

"I find somebody else to watch my Rosaria. You ain't going to take her away to give to some rich bitch

whose husband's balls empty and whose test-tube fucking don't take. Bad enough I got to work two jobs to

support you old white farts, you ain't getting my child too!"

"Ma'am, you are—" I was going to say, blocking my pathway to the door. I don't know what she

thought I was going to say. Her face suddenly crinkled horribly and she swung on me. Caught off balance, I

went down, wildly thrusting out my left hand to arrest my fall. My fingers slammed into the floor. I felt two

of them break.

Only one punch. She stood there, panting, horror at what she'd just done creeping slowly into her eyes,

while Rosaria wailed and neighbors boiled into the hall and the scream of police flyers approached outside.

We looked at each other across the din—of noise, of my hand, of her dead grandmother who was

Rosaria's sole caregiver, of her desperate fight to keep and care for her child from the affluent so hungry

for it. Affluent for the most part as white as the old people this woman subsidized with nearly fifty percent

of her paycheck. The essentially bankrupt government protected children, but did not fund day care. Kids

should be cared for by their families, was the national mood. That was the responsible way. And if families

couldn't, or wouldn't, care for their children—then give the kids to the rich white couples panting for them.

Still on the floor, I examined my fingers. Although I couldn't be sure without an X ray, I guessed they

were simple fractures. The siren stopped outside. I said softly, "Pick up Rosaria. And let me go tell the cops

everything is under control."

She did. Out of fear, or hope, or maybe just not knowing what else to do. She stepped aside and picked

up her daughter, who buried her head in her mother's neck and clung hard. I pushed past the scowling

neighbors to greet the police, letting my hand dangle casually as if nothing were wrong with it, planning how

to tell the cops there was a body here but no foul play. How to tell the Child Protection that, yes, Rosaria

had no one to raise her while her overworked, overtaxed mother put in six ten-hour factory shifts a week

because she needed the overtime—but that everything was under control, nothing here needed official

intervention.

Everything was just fine.

CAMERON ATULI

There are only forty-two people in the world, and I know all of them.

Nobody looks at me any differently as I hurry from the boys' wing through the corridors of Aldani

House, late again to morning class. "Say," Nathan calls, perky even at this hour, damn his beautiful eyes.

Melita nods formally: "Good morning, Cameron." Shoes in hand, I fly pass Yong and Belissa, who smile. I

might never have been away. I might never have had significant portions of my brain deliberately,

selectively, expensively walled away.

What was in those memories? You will ask yourself a thousand times, Dr. Newell told me, her gray

curls bobbing, and each time will be the first.

"Cameron," Rebecca, our ballet mistress, says severely as I rush to my place at the barre. "We would

have been thrilled to see you fifteen minutes ago."

"I'm sorry," I say, and resist the impulse to add, What do you expect of a delete brain? What

Rebecca expects is for everyone to be on time at her class, or at least everyone in the company who's

currently dancing. Thirty-one dancers. I take my place at the barre.

"Plié," Rebecca calls. "And one and two and . . ."

Thirty-one dancers, including the students in the Aldani School who are too young to join the company

officially. Plus Rebecca, Dr. Newell, my nurses Anna and Saul, Aldani House security technician Yong,

Nathan and Joe and Belissa on staff, and Melita, our business manager. And of course Mr. C, artistic

director and choreographer, who's famous all over the world. Forty-two, in all. Everyone in the whole

world.

Who else lived in those deleted memories? You will ask yourself a thousand thousand times.

"Left side," Rebecca calls. "And one and two . . ."

I've missed warm-up, and my muscles are cold. I take the barre exercises in half-time until my muscles

warm. The main practice room at Aldani House is long and narrow, lined with barres and mirrors on both

sides. On the shorter south wall, open windows overlook the front gardens. Delicious fragrances drift inside:

roses and lilac and other flowers that would be wonderful to gaze on if Rebecca ever gave us a second to

look at them. She doesn't.

"Battement tondu . . . good, good . . . now into the adage . . . Sarah, don't distort your hip line, keep

the turn-out. . . Joaquim, higher. Higher.'"

I have been away for two months, back for one. That's what they told me. You can't be away from

dancing for three months without losing some technique. But I am flexible and strong, and the technique is

returning. I can feel it.

I am twenty-two years old. My name is Cameron Atuli. What could I have done, or been done to, that I

would elect memory deletion? And that Aldani House, perpetually stretching its endowed budget, would pay

for it?

My body gives me no clues, except. . . but I don't want to think about that. And anyway I don't really

want to know why my memory was wiped. I can still dance. Nothing else matters.

The first dream comes a few days later, early in the morning just before I wake. I am running, pumping my

legs, as fast as I can, so scared I can't see straight. Something is chasing me. I can feel it draw closer,

closer. I stumble, and turn around, arms thrown up to shield my face. I can hear myself screaming. And

what leaps on me is . . . a cat. A pet kitty, licking my arm and purring while I cower and scream. I wake in

terror.

Is this a memory? Did I have a pet cat, once? But memories from before the operation aren't supposed

to be able to get through to me, none of them. And why would I be so afraid of a memory of a pet cat?

I lie in bed alone, shivering. And why am I in bed alone, anyway? Did I have a lover, before? Who?

I speak three languages. English, French, some Cajun. How do I know these languages? The

answer—all the personal answers from before my operation—are blocked forever from my conscious

access. All "autobiographical memory retrieval" is coordinated by something called the Gereon node, in the

right temporal cortex. My Gereon node has been "deactivated."

I remember factual knowledge (Two plus two is four; Gerard Michael Combes is president; Aldani

House is named for its founder and endower, a billionaire who loved ballet). Skills, too, are all there. I can

speak, read, dance, because apparently those things are stored in a different way in my brain. What we

have given you, the doctors said, is an induced retrograde amnesia—a sort of Alzheimer's in reverse. I don't

know what Alzheimer's is but I don't really care. I can still dance, and perhaps one of the boys in the

company will become my lover.

The dream can't hurt me.

I spring out of bed and stretch. It feels good, it feels wonderful. Today I'll do an extra barre. We're

rehearsing Prodigal Son; I'm dancing the lead. I'll do my barre next to Rob, who is quiet and gentle, with

marvelously expressive arm movements. He also has beautiful blue eyes.

I pull on my practice clothes and go down to the kitchen for coffee.

We are doing grands battements at the barre when I smile at Rob. Rebecca is not in a very good mood

this morning, and she snaps out the combinations: front, back side, plié. Repeat. Turn. During the turn

Rob smiles back at me, a little uncertain, very appealing. Playfully, I touch my extended leg to his ass.

Rebecca notices—she notices everything, she runs a very good class—and yells at me. "Cameron! Stay in

place!"

I am in my place. I am happy.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" I say to Rob, after class. He has slung a towel around his neck, the

same blue as his eyes. Sweat mats his hair and darkens his practice clothes. He nods, smiling.

We clatter down the back stairs and out into the garden of Aldani House. The area inside its nine-foot

foamcast wall is about four acres. I don't know how I know this. The main building sits close to the front

gate, which is just as solid and high and opaque as the wall. Between the House and the gate bloom the

front gardens; off to one side are a security building for Yong and the maintenance sheds. Behind the

House are a stretch of lawn with plastic tables and chairs and a volleyball net, then the vegetable garden

where the School's small pupils are sent to work when they misbehave, and then a little wood with paths

and benches and thickly leaved trees. Rob and I walk there. The air is cool on my warmed muscles, and the

air smells of pine needles and cherry blossoms and strawberries.

"You have a beautiful porte de bras in your arabesques," I say. "Much more expressive than mine. I

was watching you in the mirror."

"But you can jump," Rob says. It's true. I have the strongest and most precise jumps in the company.

We stroll through the wood until we come to a clearing beside the wall. Against the foamcast, which is

made to look like rough stone, stands an unpainted wooden bench. Without talking about it, Rob and I sit.

I reach down and pluck a wild strawberry. It tastes warm from the sun, sweet and juicy. Rob looks at

me oddly.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing." He gazes away. But I guess what his look means: You didn't use to like strawberries. I'm

getting used to this look. Apparently many of my tastes were different before the operation. Then, people

tell me, I never wore purple; now I love it. Then I listened every day to Ragliev; now I refer the classical

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