The Golden Space

by Pamela Sargent

  The second encounter had been with Merripen. The biologist had taken to visiting her and the children while Chane was away. She had been sympathetic, knowing that Merripen had grown depressed about the project. He had come to feel that it had escaped his control and that he no longer had anything to say about future events. He was an obsolete functionary wandering about the village, not needed by the children, unnecessary to the parents who had taken matters into their own hands. She knew the visits cheered him up and had been glad of it. But then she had hurt Merripen, too.

  He had come to her one night. The children were sleeping and she was alone. She offered him some wine but he refused it. Instead, he took her arm and led her to the sofa.

  “Let me stay with you tonight, Josepha.”

  She drew back, surprised. “I can’t, Merripen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well … there is …”

  “Don’t be silly. Chane’s not denying himself—why should you?”

  “I can’t explain. It’s different for me.”

  She had been foolish. Her needles clicked; the children chattered. It would have taken so little effort to give Merripen the human contact he had probably needed as much as the sex. And it would have been no sacrifice either; she had felt a sudden desire for the handsome biologist even as she refused him. Why did I do it? she asked herself silently, but she knew the answer. She did not want emotional risks. Merripen might have wanted a commitment of some kind; for sex alone he could easily have turned elsewhere.

  She did not want things this way. She no longer wanted her self-imposed exile from life. She could not do anything about Merripen; she had turned him away for the last time. She wondered if it was too late to do anything about Chane.

  Merripen, at least, had now found his way back into village life. All of the children sought him out. He was the only adult they did seek out. The rest of them, even Kelii, were ignored or tolerated.

  It had started when the children were eleven. They were not overtly hostile or rebellious, simply more indifferent. Lulee spoke of not knowing where her child was much of the time; Edwin, even grumpier than usual, muttered about being told he didn’t know much; Gurit complained about being asked embarrassing questions and having her answers rejected out of hand.

  The children were thirteen now. She watched them as they sat on the rug surveying their diagrams and charts. They were adolescents. She should have expected it. They kept to themselves, cultivating a flat, inexpressive manner of speech, wearing short, clipped hair and simple clothing. All of these new young people were austere in appearance, as if criticizing the more flamboyant and varied garb of their parents.

  “What are you looking at so intently?” she asked the children. Neither replied. “What is it?” she said again.

  Finally Teno looked up. The child’s short hair was curled at the ends, making the face seem almost pretty. “Ectogenesis chamber,” the young one remarked.

  “More biology? Is that all you think about?” They were silent. Josepha imagined that Merripen must be gratified by this recent obsession. “Whatever for?”

  “See how it works.”

  “We have to use it someday,” Ramli added.

  “I know, but you don’t seem to pay any attention to anything else,” she responded, trying to sound lighthearted. “You spend so little time on your art now, or history, and you used to enjoy those things.”

  “This is more important,” Ramli said tersely.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t, I just said there are other things.”

  They remained silent.

  “You could at least reply.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to see Gurit this afternoon?” Teno said blandly before turning back to the diagrams.

  Josepha felt unaccountably depressed. Of course they were obsessed with biology; for all she knew, it was their substitute for the pair-bonding of normal adolescents. She did not know why they had not paired off; it might have little to do with their physiology. Having been raised together almost as siblings or relatives, the young people were following the pattern normal to such groups by not forming couples. Whether they would form such bonds outside the group remained to be seen.

  There were, at any rate, good reasons for this interest in biological techniques. The young ones did not want to run the risk of natural childbirth even though, theoretically, they were capable of it. If they were to control their own reproduction, they would have to learn what the biologists knew. Perhaps they were also protecting themselves in case at some future time the biologists decided that this “experiment” was a failure.

  She watched them, wondering what they might do if they began to think of themselves as an evolutionary dead end. In their rational way, they might simply design another kind of being, one better suited to life than either they or the human beings who had raised them.

  Josepha thought: We’re the dead end. Merripen believed that and he was the person they saw most often now. We’re the dead end.

  Josepha, standing near the gate, noticed the young visitors. There were four, two boys and two girls. They were dressed in shiny, copper-colored suits with high collars. One boy slouched; the other stood straight, hands on hips. One of the girls, tall and muscular, was speaking; she gestured with her arms, flinging them out from the shoulders. The other girl stood on one leg, flexing the other, pointing one foot toward the ground. Teno and Aleph stood listening; they were still as statues. Teno was in a worn brown corduroy jacket and pants and Aleph wore gray overalls.

  “What are you staring at?” Li Hua said in her hoarse voice. She sat with her back to the stone wall.

  “Nothing. Some visitors, that’s all.” Josepha swung the gate gently. The hinges no longer squeaked, but the latch was still not working properly.

  “As I was saying, Timmi was kind of discouraged about her trip to Madrid. There’s a character there who’s opposed to almost all biological modifications. Timmi couldn’t understand his arguments. She suspects he may have doubts about extended life as well, but he has a following. Well, it just proves that if you use shit for fertilizer something always grows.”

  Josepha peered at the latch. “Why don’t you have a robot fix it?” Li Hua asked.

  “I guess I’ll have to. This place needs work. One of the solar panels on the roof needs checking and one of my faucets keeps dripping.”

  “Your homeostat must need fixing, too. This house always seemed poorly designed to me.”

  “Maybe, but I never liked the newer designs, they always seemed—” A movement caught her eye. She looked up and saw the tall, muscular girl draw her arm back. Suddenly she struck Teno. Teno staggered back.

  Aleph leaped at the girl. The other copper-clothed outsiders moved in and Josepha could no longer see Aleph’s stocky form. “They’re fighting,” she said uncertainly.

  Li Hua got up and came to the gate. Josepha said, “We’d better stop it.”

  “Don’t bother. I think they can take care of themselves. Look.” Ramli and three others were running toward the battle. They reached the outsiders and pushed them away, dodging their punches. Teno and Aleph got to their feet. The tall girl and one of the boys moved back in, flailing wildly with their fists. Josepha saw that the village children were fighting defensively, blocking the blows, then pushing the others away.

  The outcome, she realized, was not in doubt. There were six villagers to four visitors. Teno and the others also had quicker reflexes and sturdier muscles. They chopped and kicked efficiently. The visitors quickly retreated a few meters and stood together grumbling, nursing their injuries.

  The violence sickened Josepha. She pushed the gate open and walked across the park with Li Hua close behind. She passed the outsiders, who seemed curiously unmarked by the fight in spite of their groaning. She reached Teno. One of her child’s eyes was discolored. Aleph, Ramli, and the others were scratched and beaten; their clothes were torn. Yet they had won, or so it seemed.

  “What was that all abou
t?” she asked harshly. Teno stared back calmly.

  “We had to defend ourselves.” The child’s voice sounded regretful. “They wouldn’t have stopped trying to hurt us unless we did.” Josepha spotted the scratches on Aleph’s face and an ugly bruise on Ramli’s arm. The visitors had tried their best to hurt them, yet the village children had responded only with defensive gestures.

  “But how did it start?” she said.

  “They don’t like us and they’re afraid.”

  Li Hua sighed. “What now?”

  “We’d better talk to them,” Ramli murmured. “We shouldn’t just leave them there.”

  “It was hardly a fair fight anyway,” Li Hua said. “Six against four.”

  The young people seemed mystified. “What’s fair about a fight?” Aleph asked. “The point is to stop it.”

  “Let’s go,” Teno said. They moved past Li Hua and Josepha toward the outsiders.

  But the visitors were already leaving the park. Teno called to them; they did not answer. Josepha watched them get into a blue hovercraft parked near Warner’s empty house and drive away.

  The children had gone camping in the foothills.

  Josepha had seen Teno and Ramli off, helping them pack their gear, seeing them meet their friends outside the courtyard. As she watched them stride away in groups of two or three, hands clasped, packs on their slender backs, she had felt tired and old.

  There had been no reason to worry. The young people wore Bonds and needed little food and water. But now a week and a half had passed and the children had not returned, nor had they transmitted a message. Josepha, somewhat uneasy, consulted her computer, which indicated that they were still in the foothills.

  She called Alf. His image, seated behind a compositor, appeared. “Josepha! Haven’t seen you since Lulee’s party. Why don’t you come over for lunch?”

  “I’m worried about the children. Teno and Ramli haven’t called in at all. Have you heard anything?”

  “You shouldn’t worry. They’re in the foothills, I know the region. They can take care of themselves.”

  “I know where they are: I just found out.”

  “Look, if anything were wrong an emergency signal would have come in by now.”

  “Does Merripen know what they’re doing?”

  Alf shook his head.

  She noticed a light flashing on the console. “Alf, someone else is calling. Can I get back to you?”

  “Sure. Come on over if you like.” Alf disappeared and was replaced by the image of Chane.

  They exchanged their ritualized greetings. Josepha wanted to reach out to him, mend the rift, but she did not know how to do it. He asked about Ramli and Teno.

  “They’re not here now. The children all decided to go camping more than a week ago.”

  “I guess they’re all right, then.”

  “I’m sure they are, but they haven’t called in … Well, I have to admit I’m a little worried.”

  “Did they say why they were going?”

  “No, but …”

  “Didn’t anyone ask?”

  “It’s hard to ask them anything now, they seem to resent it, if they can resent anything. You’d know that if you—” Josepha caught herself in time. “They’re older now; they aren’t docile little children.”

  “So everyone just let them go off.”

  “Oh, Chane, it isn’t as if they aren’t prepared or hadn’t gone before. If something were wrong, we would have had a signal.”

  He looked exasperated. “As if nothing could go wrong with their Bonds or they couldn’t make a mistake or someone couldn’t harm them.”

  “Who the hell are you to be so concerned?” she burst out at last. “You aren’t even here most of the time.” She stopped. This was no time to pick a fight with him. “Very well,” she continued, “we’ll go look for them. I imagine they’ll be annoyed with us, or at least puzzled.” They might have made an error, she thought. It was too easy to assume that because the young people were rational, they were infallible. “Chane, do you have any appointments today?”

  “Late this afternoon.”

  “Break them. Please come home.”

  “What for?”

  “I thought you were concerned about the kids.” She paused. “That isn’t the only reason. I miss you.”

  “I was just there.”

  “Almost five months ago.”

  “That’s not so long.”

  “It is. It seems longer here. I miss you.”

  “You get along pretty well by yourself.”

  “Yes, I get along by myself, but I don’t like it. I get along because, like you and everyone else, I think there’ll be plenty of time to take care of things later on. It’s a bad habit all of us have. And you see what happens. Later never gets here. I love you, Chane.” Her face perspired. Her hands shook. She drew them under her desk where Chane could not see them. “Please come home.” She waited, expecting him to smooth it all over while refusing.

  “I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  Startled, she gazed at his image silently, then held out a hand to it. “I’ll go look for the children,” she managed to say. “I’ll let you know what’s happened.”

  Josepha, accompanied by Alf and Gurit, glided swiftly over the treetops, surveying the ground below. The belt around her waist was constricting, the jet on her back heavy. But this way they had maneuverability; a vehicle would have restricted their movements. She steered herself carefully as they passed over a small clearing and saw the remains of a campfire, a blackened area surrounded by stones and covered with dirt.

  Josepha was frightened now, trying desperately not to give in to panic, not wanting to suspect the worst. Immediately after the call from Chane, she had contacted a robot in the foothills and sent it to where the children should have been. Looking through the robot’s eyes, her screen had shown only a deserted clearing while the computer told her that the young people were there.

  The signal she and the others were following, a low hum, grew louder. They were in the foothills. Josepha saw a glint of metal through the trees up ahead.

  They came to another clearing and circled it, focusing on the signal. The robot Josepha had sent out waited there. The signal hummed in short bursts, telling her that the children were there. But they saw no one; only the signs, once again, of a campfire.

  They dropped quickly to the ground. Josepha landed clumsily, stumbling onto her hands and knees. Alf helped her to her feet.

  “I don’t understand it,” Gurit said as she paced around the clearing, peering at the trees, searching the ground for signs. Her middle-aged face was tense with worry; the lines near her lips were deep. Josepha waited unsteadily, still feeling unbalanced by the jet. Gurit stopped, bent over, then stood up. She held something in her hand.

  She came back to Josepha and Alf, holding out the object. “Look, a Bond bracelet.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alf murmured.

  “Very clever,” Gurit said.

  “But we should be getting signals from the other Bonds, shouldn’t we?”

  “This is a tricky business,” Gurit replied. “Someone has relayed the signals through this one device and has managed to do it without triggering any emergency alert systems. I wouldn’t know how to begin doing that.”

  “Then how,” Alf said, his trembling voice betraying his fear, “are we going to find them?”

  “The computer can track them if we turn off this Bond,” Gurit said, “assuming, of course, that no one’s fooled with the other Bonds.”

  “You think the children could have done this?”

  Gurit looked from Alf to Josepha. “Possibly. I don’t know why they would.”

  Josepha felt cold and uncomfortable, as if the weather had suddenly changed. “What should we do?”

  “We can go back home, put the computer to work, send robots out to search, and request a satellite scan of the entire area, but that might take days.” Gurit paused. “Or we can keep searching.�
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  “But we don’t know where—” Josepha began.

  “I have an idea,” Gurit interrupted. “Don’t get scared when I tell you this. There was a landslide near here four days ago after that severe storm we had. My computer mentioned it after the storm was over, but I didn’t think about it. I was sure the children had found shelter or else …” Gurit gazed guiltily down at her feet. Josepha knew what she was thinking: all of them had relied too much on the machines to guard the children. “They may be trapped,” Gurit finished. She did not mention the other possibilities.

  “That settles it, then,” Alf said. “We must look for them near the landslide.” His voice quavered.

  A hill of dirt and rocks stood before them.

  “There was a cave here, I think,” Gurit murmured. “They might have gone inside during the storm.” She removed her jet as she spoke, dropping it on the ground with a soft thud. She hurried to the mound and began to climb carefully.

  Josepha reached for Alf’s hand. She was numb, imagining Teno entombed inside, without food, without air. They could live without the food, but air … She thought: Nature has killed them because they’re mutants, travesties—and it wants to let us know that we can still die here, that nothing can protect us forever. She recalled the frequent trips of the young people from the village, their attempts to understand the natural world that was part of them and yet outside them.

  Alf gripped her hand tightly, and she realized she would be hysterical if she gave in to her thoughts. Alf’s hand was sweaty, his delicate face frozen. His blue eyes were filled with fear. He leaned against her heavily; she put her arms around him and his jet.

  She watched quietly as Gurit scrambled over the rocks near the top of the mound. Gurit fell to her knees and did not move. Josepha waited, wondering what the woman had seen.