“And she won’t even be able to check to see if she’s being cheated.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You’ll have to provide for that too.”
“It’s not fair, Ronald.”
He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and leaned it against my forehead. “It never was,” he said softly. “Dearest Sarah. It never was.”
***
“Damn,” my husband said. We were sitting in our bedroom. It was a half an hour before supper, and I had just told him about Echea’s condition. “The lawyer was supposed to check for things like this.”
“Dr. Caro said they’re just learning about the problem on Earth.”
“Dr. Caro.” My husband stood. “Dr. Caro is wrong.”
I frowned at him. My husband was rarely this agitated.
“This is not a technology developed on the Moon,” my husband said. “It’s an Earth technology, pre-neural net. Subject to international ban in ’24. The devices disappeared when the link became the common currency among all of us. He’s right that they’re incompatible.”
I felt the muscles in my shoulders tighten. I wondered how my husband knew of the technology and wondered if I should ask. We never discussed each other’s business.
“You’d think that Dr. Caro would have known this,” I said casually.
“His work is in current technology, not the history of technology,” my husband said absently. He sat back down. “What a mess.”
“It is that,” I said softly. “We have a little girl to think of.”
“Who’s defective.”
“Who has been used.” I shuddered. I had cradled her the whole way back and she had let me. I had remembered what Ronald said, how precious it was to hold her when I knew how hard it was for her to reach out. How each touch was a victory, each moment of trust a celebration. “Think about it. Imagine using something that keys into your most basic desires, uses them for purposes other than—”
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“What?”
“Put a romantic spin on this. The child is defective. We shouldn’t have to deal with that.”
“She’s not a durable good,” I said. “She is a human being.”
“How much money did we spend on in-the-womb enhancement so that Anne’s substandard IQ was corrected? How much would we have spent if the other girls had had similar problems?”
“That’s not the same thing,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” he asked. “We have a certain guarantee in this world. We are guaranteed excellent children, with the best advantages. If I wanted to shoot craps with my children’s lives I would—”
“What would you do?” I snapped. “Go to the Moon?”
He stared at me as if he had never seen me before. “What does your precious Dr. Caro want you to do?”
“Leave Echea alone,” I said.
My husband snorted. “So that she would be unlinked and dependent the rest of her life. A burden on the girls, a sieve for our wealth. Oh, but Ronald Caro would like that.”
“He didn’t want her to lose her personality,” I said. “He wanted her to remain Echea.”
My husband stared at me for a moment, and the anger seemed to leave him. He had gone pale. He reached out to touch me, then withdrew his hand. For a moment, I thought his eyes filled with tears.
I had never seen tears in his eyes before.
Had I?
“There is that,” he said softly.
He turned away from me, and I wondered if I had imagined his reaction. He hadn’t been close to Echea. Why would he care if her personality had changed?
“We can’t think of the legalities anymore,” I said. “She’s ours. We have to accept that. Just like we accepted the expense when we conceived Anne. We could have terminated the pregnancy. The cost would have been significantly less.”
“We could have,” he said as if the thought were unthinkable. People in our circle repaired their mistakes. They did not obliterate them.
“You wanted her at first,” I said.
“Anne?” he asked.
“Echea. It was our idea, much as you want to say it was mine.”
He bowed his head. After a moment, he ran his hands through his hair. “We can’t make this decision alone,” he said.
He had capitulated. I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or saddened. Now we could stop fighting about the legalities and get to the heart.
“She’s too young to make this decision,” I said. “You can’t ask a child to make a choice like this.”
“If she doesn’t—”
“It won’t matter,” I said. “She’ll never know. We won’t tell her either way.”
He shook his head. “She’ll wonder why she’s not linked, why she can only use parts of House. She’ll wonder why she can’t leave here without escort when the other girls will be able to.”
“Or,” I said, “she’ll be linked and have no memory of this at all.”
“And then she’ll wonder why she can’t remember her early years.”
“She’ll be able to remember them,” I said. “Ronald assured me.”
“Yes.” My husband’s smile was bitter. “Like she remembers a question on a history exam.”
I had never seen him like this. I didn’t know he had studied the history of neural development. I didn’t know he had opinions about it.
“We can’t make this decision,” he said again.
I understood. I had said the same thing. “We can’t ask a child to make a choice of this magnitude.”
He raised his eyes to me. I had never noticed the fine lines around them, the matching lines around his nose and mouth. He was aging. We both were. We had been together a long, long time.
“She has lived through more than most on Earth ever do,” he said. “She has lived through more than our daughters will, if we raise them right.”
“That’s not an excuse,” I said. “You just want us to expiate our guilt.”
“No,” he said. “It’s her life. She will have to be the one to live it, not us.”
“But she’s our child, and that entails making choices for her,” I said.
He sprawled flat on our bed. “You know what I’ll choose,” he said softly.
“Both choices will disturb the household,” I said. “Either we live with her as she is—”
“Or we train her to be what we want.” He put an arm over his eyes.
He was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “Do you ever regret the choices you made?” he asked. “Marrying me, choosing this house over the other, deciding to remain where we grew up?”
“Having the girls,” I said.
“Any of it. Do you regret it?”
He wasn’t looking at me. It was as if he couldn’t look at me, as if our whole lives rested on my answer.
I put my hand in the one he had dangling. His fingers closed over mine. His skin was cold.
“Of course not,” I said. And then, because I was confused, because I was a bit scared of his unusual intensity, I asked, “Do you regret the choices you made?”
“No,” he said. But his tone was so flat I wondered if he lied.
***
In the end, he didn’t come with Echea and me to St. Paul. He couldn’t face brain work, although I wished he had made an exception this time. Echea was more confident on this trip, more cheerful, and I watched her with a detachment I hadn’t thought I was capable of.
It was as if she were already gone.
This was what parenting was all about: the difficult painful choices, the irreversible choices with no easy answers, the second-guessing of the future with no help at all from the past. I held her hand tightly this time while she wandered ahead of me down the hallway.
I was the one with fear.
Ronald greeted us at the door to his office. His smile, when he bestowed it on Echea, was sad.
He already knew our choice. I had made my husband contact him. I wanted that much participation from Echea’
s other parent.
Surprised? I sent.
He shook his head. It is the choice your family always makes.
He looked at me for a long moment, as if he expected a response, and when I did nothing, he crouched in front of Echea. “Your life will be different after today,” he said.
“Momma—” and the word was a gift, a first, a never-to-be repeated blessing—“said it would be better.”
“And mothers are always right,” he said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I have to take you from her this time.”
“I know,” Echea said brightly. “But you’ll bring me back. It’s a procedure.”
“That’s right,” he said, looking at me over her head. “It’s a procedure.”
He waited just a moment, the silence deep between us. I think he meant for me to change my mind. But I did not. I could not.
It was for the best.
Then he nodded once, stood, and took Echea’s hand. She gave it to him as willingly, as trustingly, as she had given it to me.
He led her into the back room.
At the doorway, she stopped and waved.
And I never saw her again.
***
Oh, we have a child living with us, and her name is Echea. She is a wonderful vibrant creature, as worthy of our love and our heritage as our natural daughters.
But she is not the child of my heart.
***
My husband likes her better now, and Ronald never mentions her. He has redoubled his efforts on his research.
He is making no progress.
And I’m not sure I want him to.
She is a happy, healthy child with a wonderful future.
We made the right choice.
It was for the best.
Echea’s best.
My husband says she will grow into the perfect woman.
Like me, he says.
She’ll be just like me.
She is such a vibrant child.
Why do I miss the wounded sullen girl who rarely smiled?
Why was she the child of my heart?
“Echea” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July 1998.
Copyright © 1999 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Gio Clairval is an Italian-born writer and translator. After living most of her life in Paris, she recently moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. Her fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, Postscripts, and elsewhere.
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SPARKLER
by Gio Clairval
Howard’s mother loved her pet because it glowed in the dark. Howard thought it was a silly reason to love something, but old Mrs. Apperson, withered and sickly, was in no position to be too picky about what cheered her up.
Every night Howard came home from work to find the creature curled up in his mother’s lap as she watched her favorite films from Earth. The sparkler looked like a spiky poodle, with the occasional flicker of grass-green or lavender bursting from its asymmetrical ears. She’d named it Galin Naadam, the Mongolian words for “fireworks.” Galin, for short.
The sparkler’s sudden light always startled Howard. Each time Galin puffed light, he’d jump out of his chair. He began to hate the creature, but he knew better than to complain about the one thing his mother loved other than himself.
The pet grew rapidly. Two months ago it was the size of a chick. Now, when it walked on its hind legs, it could reach the top of the table.
Every night, Mrs. Apperson would say: “How was your day? I made you Khorkhog.”
“I’ll get it, Mom,” Howard always answered.
But she never listened. Instead, she stood up, pressing Galin to her chest with skeletal arms, and trudged to the kitchen, limping noticeably. The doctors had refused to operate on a ninety-three-year-old woman in her precarious condition.
“You should go out tonight,” she would tell him. Since they’d emigrated from Turini 34, he rarely left home to go anywhere except to his place of work. He preferred to keep to himself. He liked the lab because he worked alone.
One night, when he got home, his mother lay unconscious on the floor. Galin was tugging futilely at her, trying to lift her onto the couch.
“Help!” cried the creature.
Howard’s jaw dropped. He’d heard the rumours that sparklers could speak, but he’d dismissed them as the idle fancies of unscientific minds.
He slid his arms under his mother’s armpits and lifted her while Galin rushed to lift her feet, and together they moved her onto the couch.
“She hurts,” it said in a thin voice, echoing his mother’s Mongolian accent. It looked considerably larger than when Howard had left in the morning.
Howard summoned the medics, whose verdict was that she was so fragile, her condition so advanced, that there was no sense rushing her to the hospital. Better to tranquilize her and let her die painlessly in surroundings she loved.
Howard’s hands grew cold. “You’ll be all right, Mom,” he lied when they had left. “I’ll call a nurse, and she’ll bring some medication that’ll ease your pain.”
“I don’t need a nurse,” she snapped. “Galin can take care of me.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Howard.
A shadow fell across his face, and he looked up. The sparkler towered above him, head touching the ceiling. Howard gripped the armrests.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “It happens. Sometimes they grow bigger.”
Howard stared at the sparkler. “Not like this.”
“When needed…” Galin raised a paw fractionally, a curious expression on its misshapen muzzle.
“I don’t know about this,” said Howard dubiously. He’d always taken good care of his mother. How could a pet do better than her own son? “It looks dangerous.”
His mother smiled. “Oh, no, dear. Sparklers are harmless. It says so on the galaxynet.”
“But—”
“You were going to send me to die in a hospital with strangers. I’m asking you to let me stay here with the people I love.”
“People? It’s not a person, Mom!”
“People come in all colors and sizes,” replied his mother. “So surely they can come in all shapes as well.”
“Thank you, Mom,” said Galin, and spirals of light burst out of every pore. Howard shielded his eyes and tried not to think about this alien creature calling his mother “Mom.”
***
Within days Galin began to have trouble squeezing through the doorways between the rooms—but Mrs. Apperson, who had seemed to be on Death’s doorstep, showed signs of improvement.
Howard watched in wonderment as his mother kept getting stronger and Galin kept getting bigger.
“He’s helping me, Howard. He needs to be big to take all my illness and digest it.”
Howard threw his arms up. “Nonsense! And don’t call it ‘he.’”
Within a week Galin was so large he became confined to the garden.
It’s getting out of hand, Howard thought one morning. “I wish you’d stop growing!” he said aloud.
Galin hung its head. “As you. Wish.”
That day, Howard took a syringe from the lab, filled with taloxenin, a potent poison. On his way home, he stopped to buy the most placid Xialong cat he could find—an acceptable replacement pet.
As the conveyor approached his district, a rocket shot upwards. The passengers screamed, but the rocket dissolved before touching the top of the dome above the city, and a shower of stars followed. And rings, clovers of light, a ball with glittering streamers, radial lines tracing a spider’s leg, and fragments like tiny fish swimming away. The cat screeched in terror and bolted off before he could stop it.
Howard ran home under a rain of powdery flashes.
His mother sat on the threshold, clapping her hands at each explosion of light. Galin shone with slow-burning stars of every imaginable color, the meaning of its Mongolian name more appropriate than ever.
“It’s l
ike New Year’s Eve in Ulaanbaator!” Mrs. Apperson cried.
“Did…Galin help you out of bed?”
“I can walk without help.” She looked healthier than she had for years.
Howard hid the syringe behind a potted Calpurnia. Later, he thought.
“I love you, Mom,” said Galin, its voice weaker than usual. The spiky fur hung limp from its body.
Howard stepped forward and clumsily hugged the massive neck. Galin’s head fell on its chest, imprisoning Howard’s arms.
My God, thought Howard. It’s dying so that she can live.
The sparkler’s skin grew cold. Its light faded.
“Grow, please, my brother,” Howard whispered. “Glow.”
Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Gio Clairval
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Over the decades, Bruce McAllister’s short fiction has been a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula. His “ESP in war” novel, Dream Baby, is considered a classic of its type.
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CHILD OF THE GODS
Bruce McAllister
So they’ve given me these two big wings, but also these pathetic legs because (so they tell me) I won’t be needing legs when I fly. Makes sense—up to a point. I need to walk on this world they’ve made for me, too. That’s part of being who I am for them, and they don’t seem to get it. I’m supposed to be their “child,” the “Child of the Gods.” That’s what they’ve engineered this new body of mine to be, but it’s not as ideal as it sounds. I’m alone (I think someone else is being groomed to join me, but who knows?), and in their grand plan they’ve neglected a few things. It makes life in this body they’ve given me a living hell, even if the world is Earth-like.
Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2: May 2013 Page 15