The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  He steeled himself as Sela remounted her seat. Though he knew it was easier on the bike to follow the windblown thoroughfares that crisscrossed the desert than to skirt them, he didn’t like those roads. But he knew Sela was right. There were those crates of water bottles they’d found mysteriously stashed by the roadside—as though someone had left them there for them to find. Those had been a godsend, enough for a month if they were careful. And the vehicles, pulled off at angles into the scrub, had indeed offered treasure from time to time—they wouldn’t have their bike save for the discovery of the orange-striped RV.

  But there were other things to be found along the roadside. He remembered the small electric vehicle, stopped dead in a ditch, the remains of two bodies in the front seat. The smaller ones, three of them, packed side by side in the backseat. As always, he and Sela had looked at one another, both wondering the same thing. Could they charge the battery? Might the car be more comfortable than their bike? But they’d only done what they always did, picking through the trunk for packed clothing, food, and water. As always, they’d silently opted not to disturb the sleep of the dead. Even scavengers had limits.

  They found the road again just as the sun reached its zenith. Then they followed it west to pass a procession of high mesas. The mesas looked, Kai thought, like shimmering ships at sea, the ones he’d studied late at night on Rosie’s hatch screen. But as the road rose steadily in elevation, he soon realized that they were on a mesa of their own. The path ahead grew ever narrower, the land to either side dropping down into broad, windswept washes.

  Suddenly Sela stopped the bike.

  Kai put down his binoculars. “What’s up?”

  “Too narrow for the bots. We’ll have to go on without them if we want to get any farther,” Sela replied.

  Kai looked back toward Rosie. “Yes,” Rosie said in his mind. “That is correct.”

  “Okay . . .” Removing his mask, Kai swiped his lips with the back of his arm, tasting the salt there. Pulling his canteen up from its strap over his shoulder, he took a few careful swallows. They’d come so far; there was no turning back now. “Rosie . . . if we keep on, you can watch out for me?” he asked.

  “I will monitor your movements and biosignals,” came her reply. “I’ll alert you if you reach the limits of my range.”

  Sela gunned the motor, leaving their Mothers behind. Kai looked over her shoulder, at the road that was now nothing more than a footpath. It was all he could do to keep steering his gaze off to either side, combing the dizzying maze of jagged crevices down below, looking for some sign of water. It was not only dangerous, it seemed hopeless . . .

  But then Sela stopped again, her head pivoting to the left. “There!” she said, pointing down toward something small and dark, near the far edge of a wide depression.

  Kai craned his neck, squinting in the bright sunlight. In an instant, he forgot his thirst, his fear of falling. “That’s not water. It looks like . . .”

  “It’s a person, right?” Sela said, dismounting so rapidly that she almost overturned the bike. “Maybe another child?”

  Kai held his breath, his eyes steady on the motionless form. He peered through the one useful lens of his binoculars. Though it seemed inhumanly still, the figure did indeed look human. He scanned to the right. His heart leapt as he made out the hulking form of a bot, stationed near the opening of what looked like a cave. “Do you see it? It’s a bot!” he said. “But how do we get down there?”

  “We could fly down,” Sela suggested, taking her turn with the binoculars.

  “We don’t want to frighten—whoever it is,” Kai said.

  Sela surveyed the distance. “We could make a landing in that flat area just to the south, behind those big rocks. Then we could hike back.”

  “Okay,” Kai agreed.

  His pulse racing, Kai sprinted back toward his Mother to climb aboard her cocoon. Close by, Alpha-C placed the dirt bike gently on the road before allowing Sela to climb her treads. “Aw, Mama . . .” came Sela’s protestations as she hoisted herself up, leaving the bike behind.

  The two bots took off from the road in a massive swirl of debris. As they circled the area, Kai searched the ground to relocate their target. There it was—a shock of dark hair, a tunic draped over narrow shoulders. It was indeed a child. But despite the clamor overhead, the child sat immobile, his spine erect, his spindly knees jutting out to either side like the wings of a bird. A chill ran up Kai’s spine. Was this child nothing more than a frozen corpse?

  “Is he alive?” he asked Rosie.

  “His temperature registers 35.5 degrees Celsius, low normal for a human,” she replied as she jolted to rest on a flat sheet of sandstone. They were in a small clearing, encircled by high stone pinnacles.

  Sela was already on the ground as Kai slid down Rosie’s treads. “This way,” she said.

  They followed a narrow path between two of the stone outcroppings, Sela leading the way. But as the other side came into view, Sela suddenly pulled up. Kai peered around her. The child, his back to them, was only about twenty feet away.

  “Look there . . .” Sela murmured, her trembling finger pointing to what looked like a small pile of rocks just a few feet from where the silent child sat.

  Squinting, Kai discerned a mysterious movement, a shifting of stone and earth. It wasn’t a pile of rocks. Coiled next to the child was a fat brown snake, its neck raised, its flat head held at attention. But the child’s bot, fifty feet or so away to their left, remained inert, as immovable as her charge.

  “My Mother taught me never to kill a snake . . . But why doesn’t his Mother do something?” Sela whispered. Her hand slipped to her side, seeking the knife in her belt.

  Just then, the child unfolded his legs and stood up. Kai’s breath caught in his throat. It was a boy, at least as tall as him. And as the boy turned to face them, his serpentine comrade merely slithered off into the sparse scrub.

  “What the . . .” Sela murmured.

  Kai was dumbfounded. A boy who befriended snakes? For a moment the boy just stood there like a statue. His blank eyes stared directly into Kai’s. Or did they? For he showed no sign of recognition, no sign of surprise. Instead he turned to walk steadily toward the cave where his Mother waited, then disappeared behind her.

  Passing the stunned Sela, Kai followed, his sights set on the cave and its sentinel bot. Too large to enter the cave, the child’s Mother had stationed herself as close as possible to its mouth. As Kai slipped past her, she made no effort to stop him. The cave was small, maybe ten feet or so to the back wall. His eyes adjusting to the dark, Kai made out the orange spark of slender twigs, smoldering in a shard of pottery on the floor. Next to his fire, the boy had once more taken a seat. Cautiously, Kai advanced.

  “Yes, I understand it now. It is the same message as before,” the boy whispered to his Mother.

  “Hello?” Kai ventured. But the boy took no notice.

  “Mother, you assured me this was a good place,” the boy murmured. “You said that someday the road would bring visitors. But no one is coming. And now Naga says we may one day have to leave.”

  “Hello?” Kai’s voice echoed off the soot-blackened stone walls. Creeping up next to him, Sela took one step closer. Though they were both within arm’s reach of the boy, he still gave no evidence that he sensed them. Kai could see the boy’s hands clenching, his body rocking forward and back as he muttered something under his breath. He was speaking another language, one that Kai didn’t understand.

  “Are you okay?” Kai whispered. He reached out to touch the boy’s arm, half expecting his hand to find nothing but empty space. But instead, it came to rest on warm skin. He felt a pulse—slow and steady. He had a revelation. “Wake up,” he whispered. “Wake up. You’re having a dream.”

  The boy looked up, his eyes flashing wide. A light flickered in those eyes, something like fear, the
n hope. Tears spilled onto his cheeks as his thin fingers reached out to touch the sleeve of Kai’s tunic.

  “Real,” he murmured. “You are real . . .”

  * * *

  WARILY, KAI WATCHED the surrounding brush. They’d built their cooking fire outside the cave, very near the spot where just hours before, the snake had reared its threatening head. Sitting across from him, the new boy stared into the flames. His name, he said, was Kamal.

  “Do you feel better now?” Sela asked.

  “Yes, very much.” Kamal rewarded her with a smile, his teeth large and white.

  Kai smiled too. On the hillside nearby, cactus flourished. And now, the dark juice of early-harvest cactus fruit ran down his chin. Sela spit her seeds into the fire. They’d thought better of catching game for tonight’s dinner. A boy who sat calmly with snakes might disapprove.

  Kamal gazed shyly at the two of them. “I am sorry,” he said. “My Mother taught me to meditate. It helped with the loneliness. But . . . it became more and more difficult to come back.”

  “That’s a good trick,” Kai said. “That thing with the snake.”

  “Trick?”

  “You don’t remember the snake?” Sela stared at the boy.

  “I do,” Kamal replied calmly. “But she is not a trick. She is a friend—a messenger.”

  Kai swiped his chin. “A what?”

  “It is such a miracle that you have found me,” Kamal said. “It may be just in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “The snake guards the water, the greatest treasure in the desert. She led me to the spring.” Reaching down, Kamal picked up one of the bottles he’d filled with fresh water from his secret spring. “But now she tells me that a change is coming. There has been too little water, too much wind, for too many seasons. Soon, even the spring will run dry. It may become impossible for us to continue living here.”

  “Maybe your snake friend is right,” Sela said, her brow knit with concern. “But if we had to leave, where would we go?”

  “For sure there are no towers left,” Kai said.

  Kamal regarded him sadly. “The dust soaks up the moisture they collect. The wind blows it away. The towers themselves are falling to ruin.”

  “So,” Sela said, “what do we do? What does your Mother say?”

  “Beta says that we cannot travel outside her known coordinates,” Kamal admitted. “And she does not have sufficient data to support the conclusion—”

  “What kind of data will it take?” Sela shot a glance at Kai. They were all, it seemed, in the same intractable predicament.

  “I must have trust in my Mother,” Kamal said. “She is my banyan tree.”

  Sela leaned forward. “Your what?”

  “The banyan tree is sacred in the Hindu stories. It has arms that reach to the sky like coiled snakes. Its roots can form a whole forest. Beta is like that tree, like a house that is alive. She keeps me safe.”

  Kai looked over his shoulder at Kamal’s Mother, the sliver of the new moon reflected on her worn hatch cover. “You talked out loud to her,” he said, “in the cave. What was that language you were speaking?”

  “My Mother taught me Hindi,” Kamal replied. “As well as English. She said it is important to preserve languages.”

  “But she does talk to you in your mind too, right?”

  “When I dream, she is another person, there beside me. Just as real as you are,” Kamal said. “And when I am awake, she can talk to me in my mind. Beta is me. And I am her . . . You talk to your Mother in the same way, I see.”

  Kai looked at Sela. “We all do.”

  “It is a gift we share,” Kamal said.

  Kai watched the flames, guttering now as they swallowed the last of the twigs. Soon the fire would be out.

  Yawning, Sela stretched her arms. “It’s been a long day . . .”

  Her yawn was infectious—Kai could barely keep his eyes open. “Let’s get some rest,” he agreed. “At least there’s three of us now. And believe me, Kamal, you have more here than anywhere else we’ve found.”

  The night winds were coming up, stirring swirls of dust in the gathering darkness. Kai helped Sela tamp out the fire, then ambled toward Rosie’s cocoon. As he climbed inside, he saw Sela cast a longing look up at the faraway road, toward the abandoned bike. They’d have to retrieve the thing soon, or they’d never hear the end of it.

  Closing his hatch, Kai curled up in his seat. He pulled his blanket around his shoulders and tried to find space for his legs. “You’re growing,” Rosie said.

  “Yes. Can I change the seat somehow?”

  “A simple modification. I can provide instruction if you wish.”

  “Rosie, do you think Kamal is right?”

  “That your current water supply is compromised?”

  “Yes. Will we have to leave the desert?”

  “I have insufficient data at this time.”

  “Anyway, where would we go?”

  “That cannot be determined. I have no coordinates.”

  Squirming, he wedged his knees under her console.

  “You’re comfortable now.” His Mother’s voice was soft in his mind.

  “Yes . . .” Kai’s breathing synchronized with the pulsing hum of Rosie’s processors as he listened to her night song. She was running her diagnostics, checking her systems.

  Beta is me. I am her, Kamal had said.

  “I am Rosie. She is me,” Kai thought. His Mother felt his feelings. She heard his thoughts. She spoke to him in his mind, even in his dreams. And he spoke back, without uttering a word.

  He knew that Sela still dreamed of traveling free, even to places where Alpha-C wouldn’t take her. And since meeting Sela, he’d sometimes taken for granted the bond he shared with Rosie. But at night, when they were alone, that feeling was as strong as ever—the feeling that he couldn’t possibly know where he ended and his Mother began.

  13

  FEBRUARY 2053

  JAMES CIRCLED THE central computer in his Los Alamos lab, manipulating the image of the C-341 antidote sequence. He enlarged the engineered promoter region of the gene, the spot where Rudy’s team at Fort Detrick had modified the sequence to render it immune to insertion by IC-NAN. Once again, he watched the 3-D model of the caspase transcription factor, the little protein that turned on production of the caspase, dance over its binding site on the promoter. The factor had to bind to the promoter in order to initiate gene transcription. But if it bound too tightly, there would be too much transcription—too much caspase, too much cell death. They’d measured the binding constant under every imaginable condition. It had seemed perfect. But it wasn’t. For the hundredth time, he checked the display on his wrist phone. He was waiting for a call from Rudy Garza.

  Fourteen months before, he’d assumed his post as the lone biologist in Los Alamos’s XO-Bot building, a facility that had for years housed roboticists and AI experts devoted to developing robots for extraterrestrial exploration and asteroid mining. Kendra Jenkins, the wiry little computer genius who oversaw robot programming, had her own lab at the far end of the building. Paul MacDonald, the ex-military engineer who headed robotics construction, had his office just across the hall. Together, these three were the only personnel at Los Alamos who knew about New Dawn. Over the past year, they had each been called to wear many hats—Kendra had taken on the role of Los Alamos security chief for New Dawn, and MacDonald, or Mac, as he liked to be called, had taken on added duties in facilities maintenance—all unbeknownst to the people they supervised.

  Meanwhile, calling on the resourcefulness of his grad school days, James had set up his own lab. Working remotely with Rudy’s Fort Detrick team and closely with Mac’s team, it was James’s job to push forward on testing robotic systems designed to support the development of a fetus into a newborn infant. This would have been enough
of a challenge in and of itself. But the genetic modification that would render the resulting babies immune to IC-NAN added an extra layer of complexity.

  In the beginning, progress had been steady enough. Starting in December 2051, James had grown two “generations” of genetically modified fetuses, one in environmental chambers in his lab, one inside programmed robotic systems. The sacrifice of the Gen1 and Gen2 fetuses for autopsy had been tough. The old “fourteen-day rule” for the experimental use of embryonic material, long enforced by international ethics commissions, had only recently been supplanted with the “five-week rule.” But based on studies reported out of Korea, James knew that once a fetus reached fifteen weeks in an artificial environment, its probability of surviving to term was at least 90 percent. To accurately predict viability at birth, he would need to sacrifice his fetuses at no fewer than fifteen weeks. This was more than sacrifice—it was murder. But he’d done it. And he’d demonstrated success—in every measurable way, his engineered fetuses had exhibited normal development up through the time of termination.

  It wasn’t until Gen3, the first full-term generation, that problems had arisen. Starting in April the previous year, fifteen Gen3 fetuses had been grown in the same type of incubators as Gen2 and developed into the second trimester. Since the goal at this stage was to test automated birthing, the incubators and their associated robotics were then transferred into stationary life support systems in a secure location in the New Mexico desert, south of Albuquerque. The tasks required of these support systems were minimal: Maintain life support throughout the final weeks of gestation. At the time instructed, drain the cocoon, monitor vital signs—essentially, give birth. The purpose of the Gen3 location, as the robotics team understood it, was to mimic conditions on a hostile planet; the real reason, James knew, was to prepare for the possible endgame, bots giving birth under less than optimal conditions on earth. And to provide extra protection against possible scrutiny.