The Best of Nancy Kress (21 page)

I remembered Anna Olson at the demonstration by the Lincoln Center fountain:
“Caroline had a good run. For a dancer.”
Caroline Olson, Deborah said, had been fired because she missed rehearsals and performances. The
Times
had called her last performance “a travesty.” Because her body was eating itself at a genetic level, undetectable by the City Ballet bioscans that assumed you could compare new DNA patterns to the body’s original, which no procedure completely erased. But for Caroline, the original itself had carried the hidden blueprint for destruction. For twenty-six years.

The ultimate ballet mother had made Caroline into what Anna Olson needed her to be. For as long as Caroline might last.

And then I remembered little Marguerite, standing with her perfect turnout in fifth position.

I stood and pushed my way to the exit. I had to get out of that room. Nobody else left. Dr. Erbland, rattled and afraid, tried to answer questions shouted in six languages. I shoved past a woman who was punching her neighbor. Gendarmes appeared as if conjured from the floorboards. Maybe that would be next.

The hardcopies of Dr. Taillebois’s original presentation were stacked neatly on tables in the lobby. I took one in English. As I went out the door, I heard a gendarme say clearly to somebody, “Oui, il s’a suicide, Dr. Taillebois.”

I didn’t want to stay an hour longer in Paris. I packed at the hotel and changed my ticket at Orly. On the plane home I made myself read the Taillebois/Erbland paper. Most of it was incomprehensible to me; what I understood was obscene. I kept seeing Marguerite in her pink ballet slippers, Caroline staggering on stage. If my lack of sympathy for Taillebois and Erbland was a lack in me, then so be it.

For the first time since Deborah had entered the School of American Ballet, and despite the dazzling performances at the Paris Opera, I found myself respecting Anton Privitera.

When I landed at Kennedy, at almost midnight, there was a message from the electronic gate keeper, “Call this number immediately. Urgent and crucial.” I didn’t recognize the number.

Deborah. An accident. I raced to the nearest public phone. But it wasn’t a hospital; it was an attorney’s office.

“Ms. Susan Matthews? Hold, please.”

A man’s face came on the screen. “This is James Beecher, Ms. Matthews. I’m attorney for Pers Anders. He’s being held without bail, pending trial. He left a message for you, most urgent. The message is—”

“Trial? On what charges?” But I think I already knew. The well-cut suit on the lawyer. The move to an expensive neighborhood. Pers was working for somebody, and there weren’t very many things he knew how to do.

“The charges are dealing in narcotics. First-degree felony. The message is—”

“Sunshine, right? No, that wouldn’t have been expensive enough for Pers,” I said bitterly. “Designer viruses? Pleasure center beanos?”

“The message is, ‘Don’t look in the caverns of the moon.’ That’s all.” The screen went blank.

I stared at it anyway. When Deborah was tiny, in the brief period a million years ago when Pers and I were still together and raising her, she had a game she loved. She’d hide a favorite toy somewhere and call out, “Don’t look in the closet! Don’t look under the bed! Don’t look in the sock drawer!” The toy was always wherever she said not to look. The caverns of the moon was what she called her bedroom, but that was much later, long after Pers had deserted us both but before she tracked him down in New York. I didn’t know that he even knew about it.

Don’t look in the caverns of the moon.

I took a helio right to the Central Park landing stage, charging it to the magazine. The last five blocks I ran, past the automated stores that never sleep and the night people who had just gotten up. Deborah wasn’t home; she didn’t expect me back from Paris until tomorrow. I tore apart her bedroom, and in an old dance bag I found it, flattened between the mattress and box spring. No practiced criminal, my Deborah.

The powder was pinkish, with no particular odor. There was a lot of it. I had no idea what it was; probably it had a unique name to go with a unique formula matched to some brain function. What kind of father would use his own daughter as a courier for this designer-gene abyss? Would the cops have already been here if I’d come home a day later? An hour later?

I flushed it all down the toilet, including the dance bag, which I first cut into tiny pieces. Then I searched the rest of the apartment, and then I searched it again. There were no more drugs. There was no money.

She wasn’t running stuff for Pers for free. Not Deborah. She had spent the money somewhere.

“They asked me to join the company! He said it was very nice! He said I was much improved!”

I made myself sit and think. It was one o’clock in the morning. Lincoln Center would be locked and dark. She might be at a restaurant with other dancers; she might be staying the night with a friend. I called other SAB students. Each answered sleepily. Deborah wasn’t there. Ninette told me that after the evening performance Deborah had said she was going home.

“Well, yes, Ms. Matthews, she did seem a little tense,” Ninette said, stifling a yawn, her long hair tousled on the shoulders of her nightgown. “But it was only her second night in actual performance, so I thought…” The young voice trailed off. I wasn’t going to be told whatever this girl thought. Clearly I was an interfering mother.

You bet I was.

I waited another hour. Deborah didn’t come home. I called a cab and went to Caroline Olson’s apartment on Central Park South.

It had to be Caroline. She must have known she herself was bioenhanced, and I had seen her dance before her downfall: the complete abandon to ballet, the joy. Maybe she thought that helping other dancers to illegal bioenhancement was a favor to them, a benefit. She might be making a distinction—the same one Dr. Erbland had made—between the ultimately destructive re-engineering done to her
in vitro
and the bioenhancements done to European dancers. Or maybe she didn’t connect her own sudden deterioration with how her mother had genetically consecrated her to ballet.

Or maybe she did. Maybe she knew that her meteoric success was what was now killing her. Maybe she was so sick and so enraged that she
wanted
to destroy other dancers along with her. If she couldn’t dance out her full career, then neither would they.

Or maybe she thought it was worth it. A short life but a brilliant one. Anything for art. Most dancers ended up crippling their bodies anyway, although more slowly. The great Suzanne Farrell had ended up with a plastic hip, her pelvis destroyed by constant turnout. Mikhail Baryshnikov ruined his knees. Miranda Mains was unable to walk by the time she was twenty-eight. Maybe Caroline Olson thought no sacrifice was too great for ballet, even a life.

But not my Deborah’s.

I buzzed the security system of Caroline’s apartment for five solid minutes. There was no answer. Finally the system said politely, “Your party does not answer. Further buzzing may constitute legal harassment. You should leave now.”

I got back in the cab, chewing on my thumb. I felt that kind of desperation you think you can’t live through; it consumes your belly, chokes your breath. The driver waited indifferently.
Where?
God, in New York they could be anywhere.

Anywhere nobody would think to look for illegal medical operations. Anywhere safe, and protected, and easily accessible by dancers, without suspicion.

I gave the driver Anna Olson’s address, remembered from the tax return pirated by the Robin Hood. Then I transferred the gun from my purse to my pocket.

I think I wasn’t quite sane.

9.

Caroline and I ride in a taxi. I like taxis. I put my head out the window. The taxi has many smells. We stop at Deborah’s house. Caroline and I go get Deborah.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Deborah says. Her door is open only a little. She stands behind her door. “I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are,” Caroline says.

Deborah says, “You’re not my mother!”

Caroline changes her smell. She has a cane to walk. She leans on her cane. Her voice gets soft. “No, I’m not your mother. And I’m not going to push you like a mother. Believe me, Deborah, I know what that’s like. But as a senior dancer, I’m going to ask you to come with me. I’m willing to beg you to come. It’s that important. Not just to you, but to me.”

Deborah looks at the floor.

“Don’t be embarrassed. Just understand that I mean it. I’ll beg, I’ll grovel. But first I’m asking, as a senior member of the company.”

Deborah looks up. She smells angry. “Why do you care? It’s my life!”

“Yes. Yours and Privitera’s.” Caroline closes her eyes. “You owe him something, too. No, don’t consider that. Just come because I’m asking you.”

Deborah still smells angry. But she comes.

We ride in the taxi to Caroline’s mother’s house. I say, “Is there a party tonight?”

Deborah laughs. It sounds funny. Caroline says, “Yes, Angel. Another party. With music and dancers and talking. And you can have some pretzels.”

“I like pretzels,” I say. “Does Deborah like pretzels?”

“No,” Deborah says, and now she smells scared.

We go in the back way. Caroline has a key. People come to the basement. Someone starts music. “Not so loud!” a man says.

“No, it’s all right,” Caroline says. “My mother’s still in Europe and the staff is on vacation while she’s gone. We have the place to ourselves.”

A woman brings me a pretzel. People talk. Caroline and Deborah and two men talk in the corner. I don’t hear the words. The words at parties are very hard. I watch Caroline, and eat pretzels, and watch two people dance to the radio.

“Christ,” the man dancer says, “is this fake revelry really necessary?”

“Yes,” the woman says. She looks at me. “Caroline says yes.”

In the corner, two men show Deborah some papers. Caroline sits with them. Deborah starts to cry.

I watch Caroline. Deborah may touch Caroline. The two men may touch Caroline. But Caroline says parties are happy. No people smell happy. I do not understand.

The buzzer rings.

Nobody moves. People look at each other. Caroline says, “Is the gate still open? Let it go. It’s probably kids. There’s nobody home but us.”

The buzzer rings and rings. Then it stops. Caroline talks to Deborah. The door opens at the top of the stairs.

A man with Caroline takes a bottle from his pocket very fast. He puts the papers on the floor and pours the bottle on it. The papers disappear. “All right, everybody, this is a party,” he says.

Steps run down the stairs. A voice calls, “Wait! You can’t go down there! Young woman! You can’t go down there!” The voice is angry. It is Caroline’s mother.

I walk to Caroline. She smells surprised.

A woman comes into the basement. She holds a gun. My ears raise. I stand next to Caroline.

“Nobody move,” the woman says. Deborah says, “Mom!”

Caroline looks at the woman, then at Deborah, then at the woman. She walks with her cane to the woman.

“Stay right there,” the woman says. She smells angry and scared. I move with Caroline.

“Christ, you sound like a bad holovid,” Caroline says. “You’re Deborah’s mother? What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

From the top of the stairs Caroline’s mother calls, “Caroline! What is the meaning of this?”

The woman says very fast, “Deborah, you’re making a terrible mistake. Bioenhancement may help your dancing for a while, but it could also kill you. The conference on genetics in Paris—they presented scientific proof that one kind of bioenhancement kills, and if they’re just finding that out now about enhancements done twenty-five years ago—then who knows what kind of insane risk you’re running with these other kinds? Don’t take my word for it, it’s on-line this morning. Pers was arrested, damn him, and I found your drug stash just before the police did. That’s how you’re paying for this, isn’t it? Debbie—how could you be such a damn
fool
?”

“Wait a minute,” Caroline says. She leans on her cane. “You thought we brought Deborah here
to bioenhance her
?” Caroline starts to laugh. She puts her hand on her face. “Oh my God!”

Caroline’s mother calls from the top of the stairs, “I’m phoning the police.”

Caroline says, very fast, “Go bring her down here, James. You’ll have to lift her out of her chair and carry her. Keith, get her chair.” The two men run up the stairs.

Caroline is shaking. I stand beside her. I growl. The woman still has the gun. She points the gun at Caroline. I wait for Caroline to tell me
Attack
.

The woman says, “Don’t try to deny it. You’d do anything for ballet, wouldn’t you? All of you. You’re sick—but you’re not murdering my daughter!”

Caroline’s face changes. Her smell changes. I feel her hand on my head. Her hand shakes. Her body shakes. I smell anger bigger than other angers. I wait for
Attack
.

Deborah says, “You’re all wrong, Mom! Just like you always are! Does this look like a bioenhancement lab?
Does it?
These people aren’t enhancing me—they’re trying to talk me out of it! These two guys are doctors and they’re trying to ‘deprogram’ me—just like you tried to program me all my life! You never wanted me to dance, you always tried to make me into this cute little college-bound student that
you
needed me to be. Never what
I
needed!”