The Fila Epiphany

by J. J. Green

  “I imagine it must be hard for you to accept,” the doctor had said.

  “What?” Ethan had asked. “The fact that we couldn’t have our own children?”

  “Yes,” replied Dr Crowley. “It’s one of the many sacrifices the project founders forced upon you. Perhaps the largest one. The impetus to reproduce is instinctive after all. We denied Gens the right to fulfill their natural desires.”

  “I never thought about it like that,” Ethan said. “After the prohibition on natural reproduction was lifted and contraceptive-free water became available for people who wanted to conceive, Lauren and I talked about having a baby. She wants to wait, at least until after Arrival, and maybe longer, even forever. She says the idea of something growing inside her, even a little baby, is really weird, and that the pregnant women she’s seen on Earth vids look so uncomfortable and kind of grotesque. I got the impression she really doesn’t like the idea of conceiving but she’s trying to get used to it for the sake of the colony. I don’t mind either way. I like kids but if I never have any of my own I’m okay with that. And even if I wasn’t, it isn’t something I would ever try to persuade Lauren to do against her own will. It isn’t me who would have to carry and give birth to the child.

  “So,” he went on, “I don’t think it’s as much of a sacrifice as you think. I never heard anyone complain about it, not even women who are too old to become pregnant now.”

  “I see,” said the doctor. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal? Did you or Lauren ever donate?”

  “To the gamete bank? Yes. We both have. Why do you want to know? Do you think it makes us more content not to have our own children if we know there are little Laurens and Ethans running around somewhere?”

  Dr. Crowley laughed. “No. I was wondering if your lack of desire for children is an effect of the contraceptive. So, when you both spent some time free from artificial manipulation of your hormones you didn’t feel any different about conceiving? I mean, I know it’s only for a month or so, but you might have noticed a change.”

  “I didn’t,” said Ethan, “and if Lauren did, she didn’t tell me about it. She only said it made her feel more emotional than usual.”

  “In that case, maybe the desire for children is a social thing.” Dr. Crowley sighed. “I guess we’ll never know. I certainly hope the distaste for the experience you talk about doesn’t continue long after Arrival or we could have a problem on our hands. We’ll need the Gens to begin to reproduce naturally as soon as possible then. I’ve been very glad to see there are a few pregnancies aboard already.”

  “I think things will be okay in that area,” Ethan said. “Just because Lauren might take some time to get used to the idea, doesn’t mean all the women are the same.”

  “No, but it’s a problem we didn’t account for,” said Dr. Crowley. “We thought the opposite would be true—that frustrating the impetus to reproduce naturally would cause discontent and unrest. Some of us speculated that we might awake from cryo to find the ship jam-packed with many thousands of people and they would be starving due to using up all the supplies. I don’t think anyone imagined we might have the opposite problem.” She smiled wryly. “I hope you’re right. I and many other Woken are far too old to personally make up the shortfall in new blood.”

  Ethan wondered if it was an appropriate moment to ask his friend a question he’d long wanted to put to her. He decided to go for it. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question too?”

  “Not at all. I’m an open book.”

  “Okay. I wanted to ask, did you leave children behind on Earth?”

  “Ah. Good question. No, I didn’t. I was unmarried, had no siblings, and both my parents were dead. I don’t—didn’t—have any children. So joining the project was a no-brainer for me. For one thing, I was getting on in years. Who would pass up a chance to live another couple of centuries, even as an ice cube? It was different for others, of course. Some of the Woken made very hard decisions in order to be one of the first humans to set foot on an extra-Solar planet. Very hard decisions indeed.”

  “You mean some of them did leave their kids behind?”

  “Yes, they did. It was deemed ethically unsound to place children into cryonic suspension. The process had never been tested for the length of time we would be frozen. Only those who had a full understanding of the risks could take part, and children were too young to give their consent. What’s more, even childless Woken often left behind a spouse. Each application was assessed individually, you see. The standards the applicants were judged against were so rigorous, it was often the case that only one half of a married couple met the criteria. There was a lot of bitterness, anger, and acrimony surrounding the entire selection process. It was a difficult time.”

  “But not so difficult for you,” said Ethan, “because you were only leaving behind your friends.”

  “In that way, yes,” replied the doctor. “To tell you the truth, after my work occupied nearly all my time while we prepared for departure, I had precious few friends either. Since my revival, I’ve worked hard to correct that error.” She smiled at him. “However, in other ways it was quite hard. You see, once you received your acceptance into the cryonic suspension program, you couldn’t tell anyone about it. It was too risky, so I had to constantly guard my words. There was a sad case of a scientist who was murdered by someone whose application had been rejected.”

  “Murdered?” Ethan exclaimed. “That was a bit of an overreaction, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course, but those were desperate times. The murderer probably felt a strong desire for revenge and that he had nothing to lose. The Natural Movement were quickly gaining followers and power, and anyone with any sense could see the way the world was going. With the anti-technology, anti-“interference with nature” sentiment that was building, it was apparent that we were gearing up for another descent into the Dark Ages. I wouldn’t want to live in such a world either. Such a shame. We seemed on the verge of so many amazing breakthroughs.”

  Ethan didn’t know what the Dark Ages was, but he got the idea. As with many of his conversations with Dr. Crowley, he was left wondering what living on Earth had been like, or living on any planet for that matter.

  Ethan’s thoughts returned to his present predicament. Now that he’d experienced life on Concordia he preferred it to the life aboard the ship, despite all the terrible things that had happened since Arrival. He didn’t know if it was the wide open environment or the fact that his safety was no longer guaranteed, but he felt more alive than he ever had on the Nova Fortuna.

  ***

  He walked for hours, memories of life aboard ship and of Dr. Crowley and Lauren crowding his mind. So much had happened after their deaths—the Natural Movement bombings, the division between the Gens and the Woken—he hadn’t had much time to think about either of them or to go over the happy times they’d had and what both of them had meant to him.

  As he went along, he became aware of a rushing sound. It was like the sound of waves on a shore, but it didn’t rise and diminish, it grew louder. The sound seemed to be coming from behind him, but the night was so dark, he couldn’t see much more than the faintly glimmering band of the river, surrounded by shadowy vegetation.

  The noise increased as Ethan watched, and then he saw it: a line of gleaming foam. A high wave was running up the river, against the current. It was heading toward him.

  Ethan sped away, colliding with and tripping over roots and dangling branches. After a few minutes’ running he halted. If he went too far, he might lose sight of the river and become lost. He could still see the glint of reflected starlight on the water’s surface.

  The rushing sound was louder than ever. He wondered if he should try to climb into one of the arching trees but they had no horizontal branches, only limbs that hung down to the ground. He heard hissing and gurgling as the water swept toward him, a black liquid flowing along the ground. He backed up farther. Would the threads come with it?


  But before the wave reached him, it shrank and receded. Within moments it was gone. The rushing sound grew fainter as the wave swept on upriver. Cautiously, Ethan returned to the river’s edge. He couldn’t risk wandering aimlessly through the vegetation in the dark.

  The ground was much wetter after the wave. The soft, fine sand was rich with organic matter, and Ethan’s boots were soon sodden and squelching with every step. He continued trudging along, ignoring the empty ache in his stomach. Hours passed. He grew more and more tired but he didn’t dare to stop. A pause of more than a few minutes might be enough time for sluglimpets to home in on him, if any lived in those parts.

  Eventually, Ethan lost track of time. The night seemed to stretch on without end, and his thoughts were reduced to the impetus to put one foot in front of the other.

  When dawn finally came, he almost didn’t notice. His world had shrunk to the narrow focus of the ground in front of him and the river to his side. He’d even forgotten about the dark mountains that loomed ahead. Then he noticed that the dirt and roots he was staring at were no longer black and shadowy. They were glistening wetly, reflecting growing light.

  He halted. The sensation of ceasing his endless motion felt odd. He turned, trying to find the source of the light. In the distance, clouds were glowing with the light of the rising sun they veiled.

  Ethan could hardly believe it. He’d done it. He’d survived a night alone in the wilderness.

  If he could survive one night, maybe he could survive many more. Maybe he might make it back.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cariad was lying on the bed in a spare bedroom Osias had loaned her at the Leader’s Residence when Dr. Montfort comm’d to say he’d finished his examination of all the colonists. He sent Cariad two more suspects to add to the list. One of them was a surprise.

  “Are you going to arrest them all?” Montfort asked.

  “I haven’t decided. I don’t think I can, realistically.”

  “Well, my job’s done for now. Good luck. Let me know if I can be of further help.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Cariad put down her interface. She had avoided the step of arresting suspects while waiting for Montfort to complete his task. She hadn’t wanted to trigger anger by taking Gens into custody without explanation. Now that she had all the names, she continued to hesitate. It wouldn’t be right to arrest anyone without evidence, and the harmony between Gens and Woken was fragile. Any action she took that appeared unjust or overstepping her bounds could result in an out-and-out revolt.

  Ruefully, Cariad realized she couldn’t arrest anyone, even to protect the colony. She would have to root out any remaining Natural Movement terrorists and prove their guilt before taking such a potentially divisive action.

  She hardly knew where to start. Garwin was in custody but the last time she’d seen him he’d clung to the belief that Twyla had been innocent. She would have to speak to him again. She also had to speak to her friend, Rene, and find out if she had an explanation for the lesion Montfort had reported seeing. Also, interviewing the suspects about how they had come by their injury might turn up some answers.

  But first she would pay Garwin another visit. He’d lived with a Natural Movement saboteur for a couple of decades. He had to know something, and perhaps what he could tell her might inform her interviews with the other suspects. She had to return to the Mistral.

  ***

  Garwin was lying on his bunk, facing the wall, when Cariad went into his room. Addleson had installed a camera in case he turned violent, but from his slumped, unmoving position, the possibility seemed unlikely.

  More than ever, Garwin looked like a broken man. It wasn’t surprising. He’d gone from a position of high regard and respect among the Gens and the Woken to a suspected member of a group of known saboteurs and terrorists who were responsible for hundreds of deaths. Not only that, he’d also lost the woman he’d loved.

  “I need to talk to you,” Cariad said as she sat on the room’s only chair, preparing herself for a long wait. Garwin had no incentive to speak to her. He couldn’t win back anything he’d lost. She would have to rely on patience and persistence to get anything from him.

  But, to her surprise, Garwin turned over and sat up. He’d shed kilos of weight and his once-handsome, bearded face was thin and sallow. The gray in his hair seemed to have doubled overnight. He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry for my outburst last time. I must have frightened you.”

  “You did. Are you feeling better now?”

  “Not really. Calmer, maybe.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you but you didn’t give me much choice. I had to convince you that what I was saying was true.”

  “I know. I realized that. Only some revelations are difficult to bear, especially when they confirm something that, deep down, you always knew was true.”

  Cariad straightened up. “So you accept that Twyla was a Natural Movement follower?”

  “That’s what the marking would seem to show, wouldn’t it? I can’t think of any other explanation, and I don’t think you would lie to me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you,” said Cariad. “I’m interested in the truth.” Mentally, Cariad reined in her excitement over Garwin’s apparent change of heart. It might be a ploy. The man had played the Woken while leading the Gen rebellion, by all accounts. If he was such a successful deceiver and manipulator, she would have to proceed cautiously.

  “So,” she continued, “have you thought of anything Twyla did or said that might help us to catch the other Natural Movement members?”

  Garwin rested his elbows on his knees. “Since I accepted what she was, I haven’t been thinking of much else. Or perhaps not that exactly, but things I ignored or excused over the years. Unexplained absences, comms that she would take in another room—though to be fair I had plenty of those myself—conversations about the Nova Fortuna Project where she would abruptly change the subject. I thought she didn’t care about the colonization or the Gens’ role in it. I thought she didn’t want to discuss the subject because it bored her, not because she profoundly disagreed with me. Although… ” He had been looking down as he spoke, but he lifted his head to look Cariad in the eye. “When I finally accepted the truth about Twyla, I thought back over the years of our marriage, trying to pinpoint the moment when she gave up hope of converting me to her way of thinking. I guess I found it. When I saw the incident in its true light, it finally all made sense.

  “It was in the first year of our marriage. She’d returned from work, excited and happy. I always wondered how she had the energy to work with those little kids all day and not be exhausted when she got home, but she never was. I think I see why now. She was filled with zeal for her cause.”

  Garwin’s words chilled Cariad. How many children had Twyla taught over her career? It had to be hundreds. How many had she indoctrinated with the Natural Movement philosophy?

  “That night,” Garwin went on, “after she came back to our room, we… well, the details don’t matter, but suffice it to say, she never wanted the light on when we were intimate. I always thought she was shy. Afterward, I wanted to talk about what we would do after Arrival. It was a common subject among we Gens as you might imagine. This was years before we began to revive the “Passengers,” as we used to call you. But Twyla didn’t want to talk about it, as usual. She said the time was so far off, it wasn’t worth thinking about, and that we should enjoy our days together then and not think about the future.

  “She began on a track that, now I think about it, she’d begun many times before. But that night she went further than she ever had, saying how it was unfair that we’d been forced to take part in this experiment on behalf of humankind. She said we hadn’t chosen it, and that it was wrong—morally and ethically, and that it was against human nature to leave Earth. I disagreed. I was looking forward to the end of the journey and thought I was lucky I would be around when it happened. We argued. I said… ” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter what I
said. If I’d known about the Natural Movement then, I would have suspected her immediately, based on what she said. But none of us knew about the threat to the colony at that time. No one knew until the Guardians revealed it.”

  “Of course,” Cariad said. She didn’t think the Gens’ educational materials covered the subject or that much information on the movement had been included in the ship’s data about Earth. The people who had decided what the Gens would be told about humanity’s origin planet had been just about as anti-Natural Movement as you could get.

  “The reason I remember that night so well,” Garwin said, “was because it was after that particular spat that Twyla became cold toward me. At first, it seemed to be the usual. We would fight, then we wouldn’t speak for a day or two. But the days turned into weeks, and then we slipped into civility once again. But the warmth was gone. Not on my part, but on hers. I couldn’t seem to reach her anymore, though I loved her just as much.” He was looking down again.

  “I’m sorry,” Cariad said.

  “Not as much as me,” said Garwin. “I wish I could have realized what she was. I never forgot that argument. If I’d put two and two together, if I’d been willing to admit the truth, if I hadn’t trusted her, some people who died might be alive today. But it’s hard to accept that the person you’ve been married to for years is a monster.”

  After a pause, Cariad said, “Have you thought of anything that might help us find out who the others are?”

  The older man slowly shook his head. “You have the names of all the children she taught, right?”

  “I can look them up. There must be a lot, though.”

  “I keep going over our time together, right back to when we met, but nothing has jumped out at me yet apart from that argument. I’ll carry on thinking, though.”

  “Thank you.” Though it wasn’t much, Cariad felt she’d inched closer to finding out the key that would unlock the Natural Movement’s secrets. “Comm me if anything occurs to you, no matter how small. More deaths would be a tragedy, but from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, we can’t afford to lose any more people.”