Free Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress Page A

you.”
    “I demand to see my mother!”
    A door in the wall slid open, and a tall man with coppery skin and bare feet stepped through. Noah looked at him, and it happened again.
    Shock, bewilderment, totally unjustified recognition—he knew this man, just as he had known the nurse who washed tear gas from his and a child’s eyes during the West Side demonstration. Yet he’d never seen him before, and he was an   alien . But the sense of kinship was powerful, disorienting, ridiculous.
    “Hello, Noah Jenner,” the ceiling said. “I am Ambassador Smith. Welcome to the   Embassy .”
    “I—”
    “I wanted to welcome you personally, but I cannot visit now. I have a meeting. Lisa will help you get settled here, should you choose to stay with us for a while. She will explain everything. Let me just say—”
    Impossible to deny this man’s sincerity, he meant every incredible word—
    “—that I’m very glad you are here.”
    After the alien left, Noah stood staring at the door through which he’d vanished. “What is it?” Dr. Guiterrez said. “You look a bit shocked.”
    Noah blurted, “I know that man!” A second later he realized how dumb that sounded.
    She said gently, “Let’s go somewhere to talk, Noah. Somewhere less . . . wet.”
    Water dripped from the sides of the submarine, and some had sloshed onto the floor. Sailors and officers crossed the gangway, talking quietly. Noah followed Lisa from the sub bay, down a side corridor, and into an office cluttered with charts, printouts, coffee mugs, a laptop—such an ordinary-looking place that it only heightened Noah’s sense of unreality. She sat in an upholstered chair and motioned him to another. He remained standing.
    She said, “I’ve seen this before, Noah. What you’re experiencing, I mean, although usually it isn’t as strong as you seem to be feeling it.”
    “Seen what? And who are you, anyway? I want to talk to my mother!”
    She studied him, and Noah had the impression she saw more than he wanted her to. She said, “I’m Dr. Lisa Guiterrez, as Ambassador Smith said. Call me Lisa. I’m a genetics counselor serving as the liaison between the ambassador and those people identified as belonging to his haplotype, L7, the one identified by your mother’s research. Before this post, I worked with Dr. Barbara Formisano at Oxford, where I also introduced people who share the same haplotype. Over and over again I’ve seen a milder version of what you seem to be experiencing now—an unexpected sense of connection between those with an unbroken line of mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to their haplogroup clan mother. It—”
    “That sounds like bullshit!”
    “—is important to remember that the connection is purely symbolic. Similar cell metabolisms don’t cause shared emotions. But—an important ‘but!’— symbols have a powerful effect on the human mind. Which in turn causes emotion.”
    Noah said, “I had this feeling once before. About a strange woman, and I had no way of knowing if she’s my ‘haplotype’!”
    Lisa’s gaze sharpened. She stood. “What woman? Where?”
    “I don’t know her name. Listen, I want to talk to my mother!”
    “Talk to me first. Are you a sugarcane user, Noah?”
    “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
    “Habitual use of sugarcane heightens certain imaginative and perceptual pathways in the brain. Ambassador Smith—well, let’s set that aside for a moment. I think I know why you want to see your mother.”
    Noah said, “Look, I don’t want to be ruder than I’ve already been, but this isn’t your business. Anything you want to say to me can wait until I see my mother.”
    “All right. I can take you to her lab.”
    It was a long walk. Noah took in very little of what they passed, but then, there was very little to take in. Endless white corridors, endless white doors. When they entered a lab, two people that Noah didn’t know looked up curiously.