The Golden Space

by Pamela Sargent

  “Do you understand this?” the man said, and Merripen nodded. “Good. Let’s leave this sacred spot. You look a little shaky.”

  A door slid open near the painted village and the man led them into a smaller room. Long white couches without backs lined the pale walls. “You are truly blessed,” the man went on. “You’re also lucky. Sit down.” He waved at the couches.

  Merripen sat. Andrew sprawled near him. Karim sat with Eline, who reached for his hand. The blond man stretched out on a couch near one corner. “My name is Domingo,” he said. “Just another name to you, perhaps, but for these people it holds quite awesome connotations.” He smiled and fingered his golden beard. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. You’re greatly honored, in fact.”

  Karim scowled. Andrew said, “What’s going on?”

  “Haven’t you guessed? I am their god. They were going to sacrifice you to my greater glory. But I’m showing you even greater favor by allowing you to dwell here in my temple.” He laughed. “Don’t look so woebegone. You were very lucky to be caught on my day; they were expecting my visit. They must have believed you were sent here for me. I see you didn’t resist, or they might have killed you where you stood. Their voices must have told them you were sent as a gift.”

  “Their voices?” Merripen said.

  “You’ll be all right now,” Domingo said, ignoring the question. “You may even spawn a cult of your own. Anyone so favored by me must be sacred, after all. I’m glad you’re here. Any god can get lonely. We’ll talk.” He sat up. “But now you should rest.” He rose and left the room.

  Andrew sighed as the light dimmed, leaving only a soft glow near the floor. “He must be mad,” he murmured.

  Merripen got up and stretched out on another couch. He supposed that they were all still prisoners, but he was too tired to worry about it now. His muscles were sore, and his legs twitched as he tried to relax. Karim had reclined on the couch perpendicular to his; he tossed and turned, and Merripen heard him rasp. “Karim?”

  “I’m all right.” His voice sounded weak. Merripen reached out and touched the other man’s forehead; it felt hot.

  “You’re not well.”

  “It’ll pass. I just need rest. My body can repair itself.”

  Merripen withdrew and curled up, too exhausted to argue.

  He opened his eyes, not knowing where he was. It was still dark. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, then leaned over Karim, feeling his brow again. The fever was gone, but the skin felt dry and leathery. Merripen frowned.

  Karim opened his eyes suddenly. “Are you feeling better?” Merripen asked.

  “I’m all right now. Perhaps the rain gave me a chill.” Karim sat up slowly. “Is it morning yet?”

  “I suppose it must be.”

  “It feels like morning. It might even be later. I think we slept very deeply.” He stood up. Andrew and Eline were still, their faces toward the wall. Merripen followed Karim to the door.

  They peered into the next room. The ceiling opened and Domingo walked down the steps, carrying two bowls of fruit. A bolt of bright red cloth hung from one of his shoulders; a dead rabbit was draped over one of his arms.

  Merripen swallowed. “I hope that’s not our breakfast,” he said.

  “Oh, no. They’re only small offerings.” Domingo passed them and they followed him into a small side room. A round glass-topped table and six metal chairs with black-cushioned seats stood in the center of the room. Domingo dropped the rabbit and fruit on the floor next to his materializer. “We’ll give you something more appetizing.” He kept the cloth, adjusting it around his neck. “Please sit down.” He removed pastries and omelets from the dispenser, setting them on the table.

  Merripen was hungry. He sat down and began to eat while Domingo poured coffee. He ate quickly, barely tasting the omelet. Karim picked at his food. Domingo sprawled in one chair, sipping his coffee, glancing from Karim to Merripen.

  “I’m glad nothing happened to you,” Domingo murmured. “You might have been killed, or, at best, been brought here as slaves, and then it would have been harder for me to help you.” Merripen narrowed his eyes. “This society has a rigid hierarchy. Strangers are either enemies or slaves. They would not have been able to place you in any other position—unless, of course, you could have convinced them you were gods.”

  Karim wiped his lips with a napkin. “Are they unchanged people?”

  “In a sense, they are. They’re what we might have been long ago. I made them.” The blond man chuckled. “Then, of course, they bred themselves. Now there are many of them. There are other villages besides this one.” He paused. “I am their god. I have a temple like this one in every village. I also speak with them over the holo when I’m away. The priests enter the temple at certain times to hear my words directly, and each home has a shrine provided with my messages—prerecorded, of course. But they hear me at other times as well. When one part of their minds speaks to the other, it is often my voice they hear.”

  “An implant,” Merripen said.

  “Not at all. Their minds are divided; each side of the brain is separate. You see, they’re not conscious of themselves. When their right side directs their left side, they hear it as a voice directing them—my voice, or that of someone with authority over them. They do not know self-doubt, self-consciousness, depression, and other such advances our minds have made.” He shifted in his seat. “Do you know the feeling when you’re working, say, or concentrating on a particular task, and you lose yourself in it, coming to yourself only later?” He leaned forward. “They are that way all the time, lost in what they do. A voice directs them, and they act. They do not question or doubt. They live out their lives and die, but they do not really know death, because they continue to hear the voices and see the images of those who are gone. They do not know time except as a cycle; they may mark it, but they live in the present.”

  Karim put down his cup. “Why?”

  Domingo was silent for a few moments, then stood up. “Come with me.”

  He led them to the steps, and they climbed to the ceiling. It slid open above them; Merripen squinted at the blue sky and billowing clouds. They walked out onto the roof. The sun was up. Out in the fields, Merripen saw the brown backs of workers. In the streets below, women stood in groups or nursed babies, while others worked on cloth or pounded grain with pestles. One old man nearby was shaping clay into bowls; another spoke to a group of children. When their eyes moved toward the men on the roof, they lowered them quickly and bowed.

  “I’ve favored them,” Domingo said. “Once again, I’ll live among them for a while. Perhaps I will leave them a child.” Merripen glanced at him, and Domingo smiled. “That man who brought you here—he’s one. That’s why he holds the rank he does. I brought his mother to the temple here and lay with her. Of course, I had to put her in suspension afterward while I made adjustments in the zygote, but she carried the child to term and I blessed it.”

  Karim’s eyes were narrowed with anger. “Why?” he said hoarsely.

  “Can’t you see?” Domingo waved his arm at the village. “There is no evil here. There is no sin, only innocence. It is a paradise, in a way. We ourselves might have risen from that state, or fallen from it.”

  Merripen looked down. Everything in him recoiled from the man and what he had done. “You did it for power,” he said. “Whether or not it’s right has no meaning for you.”

  Domingo seized his arm. “Look below. Are they unhappy? They are what they are. I’m not the first biologist who ever made a new sort of being. If it hadn’t been for me, they wouldn’t exist.”

  Merripen could not speak. Karim opened his mouth, then closed it again. Domingo let go of his arm. “It didn’t begin this way,” he went on. “At first, it was only a small experiment. I made a few and raised them. I had a question to ask. Were we once this way, bicameral people with divided minds? Did our self-consciousness arise when the complexity of the mind made it know itself, when the
connections between the two hemispheres grew stronger and the cerebral cortex developed further? I wanted to test the theory, but then I realized I couldn’t do that with only a few individuals. I wanted to see what a community could do, to know how such people would live from day to day, how much they could manage, whether it was indeed possible for such people to build, and farm, and make pottery, and make a community, and plot the courses of the stars, and do all the things our ancestors did, without knowing themselves. So I made more, and gave them tools, and sent them out.”

  A breeze fluttered Domingo’s hair; the sunlight gilded it. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, and Domingo’s face was shadowed. The lips under the blond beard were drawn back; the gray eyes were bluer. Karim was a dark specter in white, arms folded, a silent judge.

  “It was painful to observe them,” Domingo said. “Many died. But they learned quickly, perhaps because I couldn’t heartlessly leave them to themselves. Even now, I help them. I give them food if there’s a danger of famine. I try to make their lives a bit easier.”

  “Did you prove anything, then?” Karim asked.

  “It’s difficult to say. I suppose they could go on without me, though it would be more unpleasant without the things I’ve given them. But it’s hard to think of leaving. I’ve been with them so long.” He stroked his beard. “I have to keep to a rather rigid schedule, visiting the villages at specific times for seasonal festivals, accepting offerings, speaking over the holo, sometimes staying in one place for a while.”

  “We stopped at a town called Harsville,” Karim said, and his voice was strained. “It had been burned. Some of the people there were murdered. Was that an offering to you? That’s where we were when we were found. Was that their doing, these innocent folk of yours?”

  Domingo stepped back. “I didn’t know about it until too late. I would have stopped it otherwise. Believe me, the ones who did it were punished.” He held out his hands. “You have to understand. The people there tried to defend themselves, but you can’t do a good job of that when your enemy has more men to send against you, and no fear.” He lowered his hands. “They’re breeding. They have many children. They’ll need a new village soon. Eventually, I may lose control—I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do about them?” Karim asked.

  “What would you suggest I do?” Domingo said harshly. “Kill them? Terminate the project?”

  “You could begin to change them,” Karim responded. “You could introduce normal children into the population and change it within two or three generations.”

  “Oh, no. I would only have other godlings contending with me for control, and they would have an unfair advantage over the others. It would change the society at the cost of great suffering. Is that what you want? Imagine these people having to live through that, with no way to fight it or even to know what is happening to them.”

  “You could make them sterile. Call them to the temple and make the adjustments—you can do that.” Karim tilted his head. “The ones alive now could lead out their lives, but there would be no children.”

  Domingo lifted his head. “You’re talking about genocide.”

  “I’m talking about ending this project.”

  “It would be genocide. They’re here now—they’ve living beings. They have a right to their existence, and to their children’s as well.”

  “You made them.”

  “It doesn’t matter who made them now.”

  Karim turned and paced to the edge of the roof and stood at the top of the marble steps. A woman below looked up, then bowed. Merripen thought: What makes us do things like this? What perversity makes it seem reasonable? He shivered; the air was turning cool.

  Karim walked back to them. “You talk about their right to exist,” Karim said, “but you let them die. You could have made them immortal—you have the means.”

  Domingo had no answer to that. Karim walked toward the opening in the roof and disappeared down the steps.

  “There will be more of them, then,” Merripen said.

  “Probably. They have many children.”

  “And that means that the rest of us will either have to confront them eventually or keep retreating. Didn’t you consider that?”

  “I have. It’s no concern of mine. Our world is dying anyway. We’ll either choke in its decay or abandon it. These may be our heirs.” Domingo gestured at the people below.

  Merripen was silent, thinking of his own project. His children were to have been the inheritors if humankind did not adapt. He felt as though Domingo had stolen their heritage.

  “Think of it,” Domingo went on. His broad chest rose and fell under the red robe. “Their society will grow in complexity. Sometime in the distant future, if my hypothesis is correct, they will know themselves. And I will have made them. They’ll worship me even then, even when I no longer live among them. They’ll be a new human civilization, and everything they do will be because of me. There’s beauty in it. Can’t you see that?”

  Merripen backed away. Domingo was mad. Perhaps the isolation from others like himself had made him mad, or maybe he had always been that way. He thought: We’re all like him. We don’t know ourselves. The old brain rules, and reason makes up stories after the fact.

  Domingo held out a hand. “Follow me,” he said. Merripen was unable to refuse. He followed the golden-haired man down the steps. People bowed as they passed them in the streets. They came to a house; a woman with silver in her hair and a baby in her arms met them at the door. Domingo said something to her, growling the words; she bowed and left them. They walked inside.

  A young woman, hardly more than a girl, stood before them. Her long dark hair hung to her waist; her cheeks were pink. She glanced fleetingly at Merripen with her brown eyes, then knelt, one arm out.

  “She’s yours,” Domingo said. “Do you understand? She won’t question it, and you’ll do her family an honor. They’ll pray that she has your child. Go on.”

  Merripen stared at the slender form, realizing with horror that he wanted the young woman, that her passivity had stirred an old instinct within him. His legs carried him toward her. She raised her eyes to his face. There was a malignancy in her gaze for a moment, an evil, calculating look, as though she had suddenly linked the disparate thoughts in her mind. Then it was gone. Her lips curved and her eyes pleaded, slaves of instinct’s force.

  Merripen turned away and fled. He stumbled through the street, stopping near another house. He leaned against the cool stones. Clothes rustled and voices murmured as people gathered near him. A little child grabbed his leg. A woman tried to pull the child away, but Merripen picked him up and held him, pressing his cheek against the curly hair. “You can choose,” he said to the child. “You can choose.”

  Domingo came up to him, took the child away, and led Merripen back to the temple.

  Domingo told his story to Andrew and Eline that afternoon. Andrew had said nothing to Merripen about his reaction; Eline had remained silent and sullen. Domingo had disappeared into a room near the holo, closing the door behind him; Andrew had muttered something about finding a way out and had gone up to the roof with Karim.

  Merripen found Eline by the glass-topped table, helping herself to wine from the dispenser. She poured out a glass for him and put it on the table with the wine bottle and her own glass. She threw herself into a seat and gulped the pink liquid.

  Merripen sipped. “This must be disturbing for you,” he said awkwardly, “feeling the way you do about biological experimentation.”

  She shrugged, drained her glass, and poured another. Merripen lowered his eyes. All of them seemed to have arrived at an unspoken agreement; they had not told Domingo that she was a Rescuer, and she had not volunteered the information. Neither had they told the blond man that Karim and he were biologists. If they were to stick together, they couldn’t let Eline know that, and they had to stick together if they were to find a way out. Domingo might eventually let them go, or he might, if h
e sensed divisions among them, toy with them instead; he was used to manipulating people. Merripen wanted to ask the man certain technical questions about his original experiment, but could not without revealing what he was.

  Guilt stung him again. For a moment, he had been thinking of Domingo only as another scientist. Had he done anything Merripen had not done himself? Merripen had created humankind’s possible successors, while Domingo had made their ancestors live. Domingo’s children had made him a god, while Merripen’s had abandoned him.

  “Cheer up,” Eline said. She was pouring another glass of wine. He watched her warily. She was drinking too much; he did not want her confronting Domingo in an alcoholic rage. “We’re safe enough for now.”

  “As long as Domingo’s happy with us.”

  “Oh, I think he is, so far.”

  Merripen narrowed his eyes. “Were you planning to flirt with him?”

  “Is that a suggestion?” she said harshly. “Don’t be ridiculous. You heard what he said. He’s used to stupid cow-eyed women who submit to the god. He wouldn’t be interested in me. He’s been eyeing Andrew, though. That would be a nice contrast for our host, a virile, forceful fellow after all those servile females.”

  Her cheeks were flushed; her lips glistened. Merripen reached for the bottle, not because he wanted more wine, but because he did not want Eline to drink any more.

  “It might not be such a bad idea,” she went on. “Maybe Andrew could force him to take us back to Harsville.”

  “No. I’ll tell him to be patient. He’ll listen. He may not like it, but he’ll listen.”

  She toyed with her glass, twirling it by the stem. “Maybe Domingo didn’t have such a bad idea. I ought to get him to take me into the town. I might have a nice, agreeable man who’d enjoy making love to the god’s friend.”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” he responded, too forcefully. Her eyes widened. “You don’t seem that disturbed by what he’s done. I thought you would be.”