The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  “Hello?” The boy’s voice was thin, uncertain.

  “Uh . . . hello.” Kai’s own voice, so long unused, sounded foreign to his ears. His gaze darting left and right, he finally caught sight of Rosie, hunkered down in the shelter of a nearby boulder.

  “I sense no threat.” He heard Rosie’s voice in his mind, soft with reassurance. Still, he shook from head to toe, a cold sweat chilling his skin.

  The boy took a step back. “Don’t be scared,” he said softly.

  Kai worked his jaw, his lips stiff. He blinked. “N-no,” he managed. “Sorry . . . I just saw something. Down there.”

  “The body?” The boy averted his gaze, poking his stick into a clump of scrub, shifting his stance uncertainly from one foot to the other. “I found it yesterday. It wasn’t one of us. Too big. And there was no bot.”

  “Should we bury it? Rosie taught me—”

  “Alpha-C told me not to touch a body if you don’t know how it died. It might cause infection.” Grimacing, the boy cast a quick glance toward the bot behind him. “She warned me that almost everyone was gone. But she told me there are some special ones. Ones who aren’t gone.”

  “Rosie told me that too.” Kai nodded at Rosie, and the boy glanced shyly in her direction.

  “So, I kept looking,” the boy said.

  “Me too.”

  The boy raised his hand to swipe the hair from his eyes. “But I’ve been looking for so long, I almost gave up.”

  “Me too.”

  Though he’d dreamed of it for as long as he could remember, Kai had never known how it would feel to find another child. Another child. At last! He felt stupid, the words he wanted to say caught somewhere between his brain and his mouth. For all the eloquent speeches he’d imagined, the only words that occurred to him now were “me too.”

  “My name is Sela,” said the boy. “What’s yours?”

  “K-Kai.”

  “Kai. You’re a boy, right?” said Sela. “I can tell. I’m a girl.”

  “A girl . . .” Kai took two steps forward, his right hand extended. At arm’s length, he came to an abrupt stop. He felt his lips curling into an awkward smile, the blood rushing to his face. “I think we’re supposed to shake hands,” he said. “I learned it in Rosie’s vids.” His hand closed around hers, her touch warm and soft. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It is very nice to make your acquaintance!” Sela performed an awkward curtsy, pulling them both off balance. “And Rosie,” she said, her eyes drifting toward Kai’s Mother. “I like that name. Like a flower.”

  She laughed, a sound like music.

  * * *

  IN HONOR OF their meeting, they decided to prepare a feast. Using her stick, Sela prodded fat nopal cactus paddles from their moorings. Then using a knife with a fancy engraved handle, she dexterously removed their stinging spines, shaved their edges smooth, and chopped them into smaller pieces.

  Kai retrieved water from the storage depot near their new campsite—unlike others they’d found, this depot was well stocked. He used tiny, sweet ground-cherries mashed to the bottoms of flat rocks to set deadfall traps for the little mice who, as the sun set and the earth cooled, would soon emerge from their dens beneath the dry brush to search for meals of their own. Standing back, he admired Sela’s pile of cactus. “Nice knife,” he said.

  “I found it near the depot where I grew up,” Sela said, fingering the ivory hilt.

  “Nicer than mine.” Kai rubbed his thumb over the smooth housing of his own small knife—red plastic with a symbol painted in white on one side—a cross, inside what looked like a shield. Small though it was, he liked the way he could fold the knife back inside the casing when he wasn’t using it. It reminded him of Rosie’s wings.

  A hollow thud announced Kai’s first catch. He bent down to snatch up one of the rocks and extricate its flattened victim.

  Sela leaned forward, her eyes wide. “What do they taste like?”

  “You never had one?”

  “To tell you the truth”—Sela blushed—“I’ve never eaten meat.”

  “If you don’t want it . . .”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I mean. Just . . . Alpha never showed me how.”

  Kai smiled. “Don’t worry. Rosie says they’re safe to eat.”

  They built a fire in the shelter of a tower of high rocks as their Mothers, standing guard a short distance away, cast long shadows in the dying rays of the sun. While Kai retrieved two more mice from his traps, Sela heated her cactus in a heavy metal skillet—another found treasure. After expertly ripping the skin from his little victims, Kai skewered the carcasses on a long, thin stem of desert brush, then propped it out over the low flames. As the meat cooked, they gorged themselves on the cactus, the juice running down their chins.

  “No Pedia-Supp for us tonight!” Sela smiled. “This is a special day.” But Kai only moved his mouth, his mind racing with half-formed words.

  “What’s the matter?” Sela asked.

  “Um . . . I’m not used to talking out loud. But you . . . you’re so good at it.”

  “I practiced every day,” Sela said. “Don’t worry, it’s easy. And it’ll get easier, the more of us we find.”

  “You think there are more?” Kai swiped his chin with one hand. “More like us?”

  “I spotted another bot earlier. And it wasn’t yours.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She didn’t have that mark on her wing.”

  Kai turned to regard his Mother. Her bright tattoo, the distinctive splotch of yellow paint that adorned her left wing, was barely visible in the waning light.

  “What’s it for?” Sela asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What does that marking mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought they all had them . . .” He gazed at Sela’s Mother. Though similar in design to Rosie, she was different—her stooping posture, the way she stayed so close to Sela, even at rest. And no tattoo. “So . . . you saw another bot?”

  “Alpha couldn’t make her out. But for sure I saw a bot as we were flying over here.” Sela raised one thin arm to point west, toward the spot where the sun now painted the horizon. “I wanted Alpha to circle back there. But we found you first.”

  “We can check it out in the morning.”

  Beside him, Sela bit carefully into her meat, ripping it delicately from the tiny bones with her teeth. Then she pursed her lips, turning to spit into the fire.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Maybe not,” she sputtered. “Not for me.”

  “Sorry . . .”

  “It’s okay.” Grabbing up her canteen, she washed her mouth out with a swig of water.

  “Sela . . .” The feeling of her name on his tongue was strange. “How many more of us do you think there are?”

  “Alpha said there were fifty in all . . . in the beginning.”

  “When we were launched.”

  “Yes. But . . .” Sela sat back, the hint of a frown shadowing her brow.

  “But she doesn’t know how many there are now,” Kai said.

  “No. She just says . . .”

  “There is a nonzero probability of success.” Kai smiled, and he could see Sela return his grin in the firelight. “Why do you think they separated?”

  “Separated?”

  “Why didn’t all of our Mothers stay together?”

  “Alpha told me it was for security.”

  “Rosie said that too. But security from what?”

  “She didn’t say . . . The Epidemic . . . Predators maybe?”

  “But we’re immune to the Epidemic. And Rosie has a laser. She killed a wild dog once, when it got too close.”

  Kai looked up at the housing near where Rosie’s arm met her fuselage. Her laser beam was deadly accurate. A weapon is not to be
used except in extreme circumstances, she’d warned. Only when our lives are in danger.

  Sela knit her brow. “A long time ago,” she said, “I think Alpha used her laser too. It was late at night, and I was asleep in the cocoon. It was loud, like an explosion . . . But when I looked out the hatch window, there was nothing there.” She shook her head. “Maybe it was just a dream.”

  Kai felt a chill run up his spine as he peered into the darkness outside the glow of their fire. Rosie had taught him that she was made in a laboratory. But who made her? Where was that laboratory? She wouldn’t say. That information, she said, was “classified”—whatever that meant. He imagined the adults who populated his vids, riding in cars and going to work in tall office buildings. Was there someone else, someone not like him and his Mother, still alive out there? No. According to Rosie, the probability of that was “minimal.” Only the Mothers and their children had been designed to survive.

  “I just wish . . .” He stirred the fire with his empty skewer. It felt odd to say this to someone other than Rosie. “I just wish our Mothers would’ve stayed together. It would’ve been easier.”

  Sela finished off the water from her canteen. “I have extra water in my cocoon,” she said, “from my last campsite.”

  “I’ve got plenty too,” Kai said. “At least for now.”

  Sela stood up, brushing the dust from the front of her tunic. “So . . . morning, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes were still on him, appraising him. “This is good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Despite the chill wind, Kai felt warm. He stared up at the velvet sky, the sharp pinpoints of stars dancing across its surface. It was good.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING Kai awoke at daybreak, eager to see Sela again. As he slid down Rosie’s treads, he scanned the campsite. Alpha-C’s hatch was ajar, a dull pink glow emanating from inside. Leaning against her tread, Sela was sucking on the corner of a packet of Pedia-Supp. “This stuff isn’t as good as real food, but at least it’s quick,” she said between mouthfuls.

  “We’ll head west today?”

  “Alpha agreed to our plan.”

  “Rosie too. But how do we stay together?”

  “Can you tell your Mother to follow us?”

  Kai paused, telegraphing Rosie. “Yes,” he said aloud. “She can track you.”

  Climbing back into his cocoon, Kai retrieved his own Pedia-Supp ration from the hold behind his seat. He strapped himself in, then ripped off the corner of the packet to suck down its contents. Through the hatch window he could see Sela mounting Alpha’s treads. And for the first time, he watched another bot prepare for takeoff, her wings emerging from the sleek casing of her back, her ducted fans jutting from their massive sheaths to turn toward the ground. Then all was obscured in dust as Rosie followed suit.

  The air cleared as they rose, Alpha leading the way and Rosie giving chase. Kai was mesmerized by the sight of another bot in flight. But he knew that Rosie didn’t fly the way that Alpha did, curving and swerving through the sky like a mad bird. “Can you talk to Alpha-C?” he asked Rosie.

  “What is Alpha-C?”

  “Sela’s bot. Can’t you talk to her?”

  “No. I communicate only with my child.”

  “But you can see her.”

  “Yes, I sense her form. I’m maintaining a safe distance.”

  “Would you be able to sense another bot, if she was down below on the ground?”

  “I’ve commenced pattern recognition. I will report to you if I identify a structure with the correct signature. However, my infrared detectors will not yield a discernible signal at the current ground temperature.”

  “Why not?”

  “The average ground temperature currently ranges between 29 and 33 degrees Celsius. The small amount of heat emitted by a bot or by a life-form on its surface will not be detected.”

  It was hot, much hotter than it had been in springs past. The land below was obscured in haze, and Kai could only hope that Sela would be able to make out the bot she’d spotted the day before. Suddenly Alpha dipped one wing, tracing a wide arc as she slowly descended. “Do you see something now?” Kai squinted, straining to detect whatever it was that Sela had located.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “But you’ll follow Alpha-C?”

  “Yes.”

  As they set down, Kai fumbled out of his restraints. He pushed open Rosie’s hatch door, slid down her treads, and sprinted toward Alpha. Sela’s back was toward him, her slight shoulders slumped as she stood at her Mother’s side.

  It wasn’t until he came up beside her that he caught sight of the wreckage. “What is it?”

  “It’s . . . It was . . . a bot.” Sela’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I should’ve known. There was a reason Alpha didn’t recognize her. She’s just . . . in pieces.”

  Kai stepped forward gingerly, the hairs on his arms prickling in the heat. A thin wind whistled through the disembodied fan that lay on the ground in front of him. A few feet away, a fuselage lay cracked open like the shell of an egg. He saw one wing, extended. And protruding from beneath it . . .

  “Uhhhnnn . . .” Kai stared at the splintered vessel, the network of tubing and wires trying but failing to hold together its elongated egg shape. In his mind’s eye, he saw another vessel like this one, lying in the hot sun beside the supply depot where he’d been born.

  “What is that?” he’d asked.

  “That is your birthplace,” Rosie had explained. “Your incubator. We have no need for it now. But once, it was very important.”

  An incubator. But this one was different. This one contained a tiny, perfectly formed skeleton, its hands folded together as if in prayer.

  He felt Sela’s hand on his arm, the gentlest of touches. “It’s okay.” Her voice was low, choked, as she turned to go. “C’mon. We’ll find more. Next time they’ll be alive.”

  “But, Sela,” he said. “We can’t just go. We should bury this one.”

  8

  DECEMBER 2051

  IN THE DIM, windowless room at Fort Detrick, James dreamed of his lab at Emory, with its expansive benches and sweeping campus views. He wished he could have brought his lab group here with him. But as the months had passed, his cadre of postdocs at Emory had had to manage with only a weekly check-in. His department head had to be content with a vague explanation from the government as to his indispensability on a matter of national security. And he had to be content with Rudy Garza’s small team, and with a lumpy daybed in the cramped Harpers Ferry apartment that he and Rudy now shared.

  James smiled. At least, like many chemists, Rudy was also a fine cook. His favorite pastime was watching cooking vids as he concocted delicious creations in the kitchen.

  But they had to be careful. The previous night, as Rudy had treated James to an amazing new tamale dish, they’d left the vids running. The news had come on, headlining a report about mysterious deaths in the Afghan desert. “The military has cordoned off the area,” said a male reporter dressed in a hazmat suit. “But people are still dying here.” The camera panned over a metal fence to show a row of wasted figures lying on bloodstained army cots—innocent victims who looked all too much like James’s own parents. “No one seems to know the cause,” the reporter continued. “And military personnel have so far denied access to humanitarian aid.”

  Rudy had punched his remote. “Enough of that,” he’d said. “We need our sleep.”

  But sleep had not come. Exhausted, James scanned the orderly rows of small vials in cold storage, each a different variation on the same theme. His gloved fingers danced over the vials, picking out one labeled “C-341.” With any luck, this was the NAN sequence that would challenge the onslaught of the deadly IC-NAN.

  Subverting IC-NAN would not be easy; to date, no one known to be infected had recovered. IC-
NAN’s mode of action was to block transcription of the gene for a key protein called initiator caspase. It did this by inserting itself into the DNA at a site called the “initiator caspase promoter,” at the spot where transcription of the caspase gene to make messenger RNA would normally begin. Without this messenger RNA, the cell couldn’t make caspase. Without the ability to make caspase, the cell couldn’t respond to natural signals telling it that it was time to self-destruct. And so it lived on, dividing, clogging the surfaces of the lung, breaking off to travel throughout the body.

  To defeat IC-NAN, their only recourse would be to somehow insert a new caspase gene, one with a different promoter that wasn’t susceptible to modification by it. Their plan was to develop an antidote NAN. The aerosol form used to administer this new NAN could be the same as the one that the Defense Department had used for the IC-NAN, miniaturized for individual dosing—similar to the inhalers commonly used by asthmatics. Rudy’s team had set to work synthesizing the alternative antidotes. It had been James’s job to set up and monitor testing of these on human cell culture models.

  James set the vial carefully in a rack at the back of his biosafety hood. “I only wish we could speed this process up somehow,” he complained.

  “James, we must be patient,” Rudy replied. “These types of nanostructures are notoriously unstable and difficult to synthesize. It took my team three years to perfect a stable dosage form of the IC-NAN, and we did not even have to test for adverse effects. No animal trials were required—we got away with using only cell culture to prove efficacy. You must believe me. You and I have come very far in only two years.”

  It was true. For IC-NAN, the goal was death. But the antidote NAN needed to be both effective and safe—free of long-term adverse effects. James had screened hundreds of candidate NANs in cell culture. Of these, five had been deemed effective enough to move on to primate testing. It was the primate testing, on macaques housed in a secluded Puerto Rican facility, that was eating up precious time as the team waited to rule out unwanted side effects. Only a single candidate, C-341, was finally showing promise.