The Future We Wish We Had

dealership lot.”

I blinked my eyes open to see that he was right. We were almost back, and Andre was driving at a safe, respectable pace, observing all of the traffic laws of the sea.

“Did you hear the final price, Mom?’ Andre said with a note of uncertain hope in his voice.

“No,” I said, bracing myself for sticker shock and already preparing for the unpleasant task of talking my son out of the sub he had so obviously fallen in love with. Ron quoted me the number of credits, which was, as I had suspected, higher than the amount we had budgeted for, but not nearly as high as I had expected. It was, in fact, quite reasonable, considering the sub’s excellent condition, well thought-out safety features, and luxury options. But Andre was a teenager. He didn’t really need to start out with all those bells and whistles. In fact, it would probably do him good to start with a more humble vehicle. I certainly had.

Just as Andre was about to start his turn into the sub lot, a plump green SPig came barreling out at us. It shouldn’t have been much of a problem considering that SPigs can do no more than thirty at their top speed, but its teenage driver was distracted. The young man, obviously not paying attention, had turned to speak with someone in the back seat and hadn’t seen us yet.

The path of the other vessel would intersect ours dead on. I drew in a sharp breath and stifled a scream just as the other driver noticed us and began frantically trying to maneuver in another direction. But his ungainly vehicle refused to cooperate. I heard a strangled yelp from Ron in the back. Andre, meanwhile, seemed completely unfazed as the warning signal began to ping. I slapped my hands over my eyes, but then spread my fingers and watched in terrified fascination.

Tapping the brake rotors, Andre twirled the gyro steering downward and threw the upper and side attitude adjustment jets on full so that we dove directly beneath the wallowing SPig. Instead of a jarring crash that would likely have disabled both vehicles, all I heard was the tiniest squeak as the SPig’s bulky rudder scratched against our hull for a bare fraction of a second.

Once clear of the other minisub, Andre steered the Subatomic on a slow, gentle curve back into the dealership and parked it at its original slot while I struggled to breathe normally again.

This was no time for debate. I knew what I had to do. Andre had wanted to make the final decision, but he couldn’t afford this choice without me.

“We’ll take it,’ I said. I glanced at Andre. ‘We’ll split the cost.”

The next day was Friday and, as promised, Andre swung by to pick up his little sister Reina from aquaballet on his way home from school. Howard and the rest of the submarine fishing fleet were home from their expedition with a large catch, so the four of us-

Howard, Reina, Andre, and I-had dinner as a family for a change.

Andre regaled us all with the tale of the previous day’s shopping expedition and test drive, as well as the story of his first day at school with his new minisub.

“You drove a good bargain, son,” Howard said with an admiring chuckle. “Literally. Why don’t we all go out for a spin after supper?”

‘Could, uh, could that wait for tomorrow?” Andre said, his face growing pink. “I kind of have a date tonight.”

“Who with?” Reina blurted. “Do I know her? Does she go to your school?”

Howard cleared his throat, cutting off the stream of questions. “Don’t stay out too late, son.”

‘I won’t.” Andre wiped his mouth with a napkin and excused himself from the table. “I promised Mr. Martinez I’d have Etsuko home early.”

I stared at my son in amazement. Andre was going out without us, on his first date alone. Howard grinned like the proud father he was. I, however, was not quite ready to let go. “Wait. What kind of date? Where are you going?” I asked as he headed for the front floor hatch where the Subatomic was parked.

He turned, grinned at me, and shrugged. “Where else, Mom? To watch the submarine races.”

GOOD GENES by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When Alden was six weeks old, the doctor called them into his office. Ro didn’t want to go. She had a feeling that something was wrong. None of her friends had ever been called to a doctor’s office, especially when there had been no check-up previously, no tests, nothing that would seem out of the ordinary.

Ro’s husband, Gil, reassured her, but he didn’t sound sincere. He didn’t meet her eyes any more, and his ruddy face looked even more flushed than usual. He too knew that things were wrong. They bundled up the baby, whom Ro privately thought too small to be named after his famous great-grandfather, and went to the scheduled appointment.

The doctor’s office was a different place than the waiting room. Ro had been comfortable with the waiting room. It was designed for pregnant women: large, comfortable chairs with good back support, footstools, and a gas fireplace that was in constant use in the winter. A computer in the corner constantly played information about women’s health and reproductive news, and from any of the tables, waiting patients could easily access sites that pertained to childbirth and childrearing.

But the office was around the back of the clinic-actually in a different building altogether-and the waiting area felt like the waiting area of a lawyer or accountant. There was one large window with a spectacular view of the parking lot, and a less spectacular view of the lake across the street and the mountains beyond. The chairs were straight-backed with no armrests, and weren’t wide enough for Alden’s carrier. With some hesitation, Ro put the sleeping baby on the floor.

She leaned over and played with his curly black hair. His tiny fists were curled against his sleeper, the soft blue blanket her parents had given him tucked beneath his chin. She had no idea how this beautiful boy with his dark brown eyes, chocolate skin, and delicate features could be ill. He was developing the way he was supposed to, he ate well, although he still did not sleep through the night.

Gil paced, and somehow that reassured her: if Gil was nervous, then she had a right to be nervous too. Only she didn’t tell him-couldn’t tell him-one of the sources of her nervousness. She didn’t want to be the mother of a sickly child. She had seen those mothers, with their vaguely frantic air despite their protestations that everything was fine and under control. She had seen the despair in their eyes, the way they clung to their babies as if determination alone could prevent whatever tragedy was ahead.

She had clung to Alden that way on the drive over, and had been ashamed of herself. She didn’t even know what the doctor was going to say.

Finally, the androgynous automated voice announced that the doctor was ready to see them. The door to his office swung open, and she grabbed Alden’s carrier, wishing once again that she was in the waiting room at the clinic, where real people called her name and opened the door, and gave her a reassuring smile as they led her into an unfamiliar room.

The doctor’s office smelled faintly of roses. Several tiny hybrids lined a wall just inside. Books-old, dusty, and obviously just for show-lined another wall. The carpet was plush, the desk was messy, and the view here, through the window behind the desk, was of a small fenced-in garden, well tended. She had always known that Dr. Wyatt was a nurturer. It was nice to have that sense confirmed.

He looked as if he belonged behind that desk. He wore a brown sweater with a cream-colored turtleneck beneath it, setting off his mahogany skin. His shaved head shone, and the single diamond he wore in his left ear looked even more prominent than usual. As Ro and Gil entered, he stood and took the carrier from them, smiling down at the sleeping baby.

He ran a finger along Alden’s porcelain cheek. “Ironic,” he murmured so softly that Ro knew he was speaking only to the baby. She shuddered, thinking that a confirmation of all she had feared. Then he smiled at her. “Please sit.”

She waited until he placed the carrier on his desk, on the only bare spot left by the piles of paper. The carrier was turned so that they all could see the boy. He hadn’t moved, but his blanket had. His soft breath made a corner of it flutter ever so slightly.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ro asked, unable to wait.

Gil took her hand in his warm, strong one. She could feel tension in both of their fingers as they braced themselves.

“Nothing,” Dr. Wyatt said.

“Nothing?” And in Gil’s surprised growl, she heard the beginnings of anger. She squeezed his hand, warning him to wait.

“That’s what so wonderful,” Dr. Wyatt said, leaning forward. “We did the standard genetic testing on your son.”

Ro remembered. Genetic testing was required in Oregon, in all but a handful of states now, and the results were supposed to be kept private. In fact, parents could opt not to know what dangers lurked in their child’s genes. Ro and Gil had taken a moderate approach: if the problem was going to be incapacitating or life-threatening they wanted to know. Otherwise, they chose to let the information come to Alden on his eighteenth birthday-a Pandora’s box he could chose to open or not, all on his own.

Gil had stiffened beside her. She knew what he was thinking: incapacitating or fatal. How could Dr. Wyatt call that nothing?

“And we discovered that Alden is only infant we have seen in this clinic, indeed in this part of the state, who had a perfect set of genes.”

“P-perfect?” Ro repeated. She had been so expecting the other, the bad, the horrible news, that the good news was hard to absorb.

“Perfect. No missing genes, no malfunctioning genes, no hereditary diseases. In fact, he is quite the survivor, with some extra genes that have been determined to fight certain viruses. Unless your son has an accident, he will live a long and healthy life.”

Ro frowned. Perfect.

“We used to think,” Dr. Wyatt was saying, “that perfect human beings could be engineered. What we didn’t know until just recently was that perfect human beings already existed. They could be born into a family like yours.”

Gil cleared his throat, and slipped his fingers from Ro’s. He recovered quicker-or at least his brain did. It always had.

“We signed the waiver,” he said. “We weren’t supposed to find out anything like this about Alden.”

“You signed the waiver, yes,” Dr. Wyatt said, “but did you read it?”

Ro glanced at Gil. She had been in labor when they remembered the consent. He had been the one to handle the business details of Alden’s birth. He shrugged. “I scanned it.”

“Then you might have missed one of the clauses in the middle. It addressed this very issue.”

“What issue?” Ro asked.

Dr. Wyatt smiled at her; then he leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk. She recognized the posture. It was his sincere-explanation posture. Once, another expectant mother had described it to her as his attempt not to patronize his patients.

“We have the capability of growing new organs from various cells. We do a lot of microsurgery, a lot of repair work on the cellular level before we can use some of these organs.” He glanced at Alden, who was still sleeping. “Sometimes we repair genetic defects in the womb. We also do a lot of work with the new techniques, ones