by Steve Gannon
Most of the other colonists were absent, having departed to begin a ground survey of the planet. Mechanized farming required the efforts of only a few, and Jake and Lara and a handful of others had elected to stay. Turning from the view below, Lara glanced at the human beside her. Resisting a desire to touch him, she placed a hand on her swollen abdomen, thinking back to the night after the funeral. Not wanting to be alone, she had followed Jake back to his quarters. He’d seemed uneasy, and she had asked if he objected to her presence.
“I’m not sure how I feel right now,” he’d responded. “We haven’t been alone together since . . .”
“Since back on Earth? Since the night I took this body?”
Jake nodded.
“I regret what happened then. I mistakenly thought you were attacking me. Later I realized you were simply indulging in the mating process. Speaking of which, there is something about that I still don’t understand. When I first took this body, it had been altered and was incapable of reproduction. The data in my memory banks explained what you were doing, but not why.”
“Reproduction isn’t the only purpose of the mating process, as you put it.”
“Oh? What else is there?”
“Well, for one thing, sex can be used to show love and affection.”
“Why would you want to show love and affection for someone you’ve never met, especially a cyborg? And why was the transfer of money necessary?”
“Let’s just say it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Please, Jake. I’m trying to understand.”
“Okay,” Jake sighed. He thought a moment. “Remember eating breakfast this morning?”
“Mmmm, yes. Scrambled protein, rehydrated potatoes, pancakes, and coffee. It was delicious.”
“Right. Your body needs food, so it’s happy when it gets fed. Sex is similar. You can be hungry for that, too. If you reexamine your memory, you’ll find that sex doesn’t necessarily have to be unpleasant.”
“It can be pleasurable, too? Like food?” Curious, Lara referred to the cyborg’s basic operating program. To her amazement, she discovered there was something she had overlooked.
“Jake, will you do something for me?” she asked.
“What?”
“May we try it one more time? Please?”
Hours later Lara stretched lazily, rolling away from Jake’s comforting warmth. Sitting up in bed, she watched him as he slept, then shook him gently. “Jake?”
“Huh?”
“Are you conscious?”
“I am now.”
“Good. I’m hungry. May we eat?”
“I think I can handle that,” Jake had answered with a grin.
“And Jake? Afterward . . . let’s do it again.”
Now, as Jake and Lara sat on the outcrop above the settlement, white puffs of clouds began forming over the land, casting a moving patchwork of light and shadow across the hills below. Warmed by the sun, Lara gazed over the valley, noticing a foxlike animal moving stealthily through the fields. She studied it for several minutes, then nudged Jake. “There’s something down there,” she said, pointing.
Jake squinted, catching a glimpse of the predator slipping through the grass. “I’ve seen a couple of those around lately,” he said. “They look like a cross between a fox and a cat.”
Moments later the creature disappeared, showing itself again briefly as it crossed a clearing.
“What’s it doing?”
“Hunting, probably,” Jake answered with a shrug. Then, dismissing the animal, “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Lara answered, surprised to find that she truly meant it.
“What’s it like where you come from?”
Lara considered carefully. “It’s hard to explain in terms you could comprehend.”
“Try.”
“Well, it’s beautiful there, too,” she said, again catching sight of the fox. “There’s life, so much life. Not like here, but . . . it’s beautiful there, too.”
Jake and Lara fell silent once more, continuing to track the fox as it crept through the fields. As it neared the base of the mountain, a bird appeared, hovering in the currents above the valley floor. It hung in an updraft a moment, then abruptly folded its wings and dived at the fox, pulling up at the last second. Seeming injured, it fluttered to the ground thirty meters from the predator.
The fox changed direction. Before it reached its prey, the downed bird rose again, only to fall once more near a stand of trees bordering the field. “Is it hurt?” Lara asked as the bird barely escaped a second time.
“I don’t think so,” Jake answered. “It looks as though it’s trying to draw the fox away. Probably has a nest in that field somewhere.”
“But it’s risking its own life.”
“Animals often do that to protect their young.” Jake placed a hand on Lara’s abdomen. “Speaking of which, how’s it doing?”
“He,” Lara said. “The child is male.”
“How do you—” Jake shook his head. “Never mind. I should know better by now. How soon will he come?”
“Soon,” Lara answered. “I’ve accelerated his growth and made other changes as well. He’ll be a very special human. At present he is fully formed and eager to see his new world. He says he is eager to meet you, too.”
“You talk with him?”
“Of course. I want him to remember me after I’m gone.”
Jake regarded her carefully. “Gone? What do you mean?”
“You know that my people are looking for me. When they arrive, I must depart.”
“But . . . do you really have to leave? Can’t you—”
“No,” Lara interrupted, taking Jake’s hand. “I’m a soldier, bound by duty to return.”
“But . . .”
“I’m sorry, Jake. It’s out of my control.”
Jake nodded. “I guess I knew you would have to leave sometime. I just . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I will miss you,” said Lara, surprised by the depth of her feeling.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
“No matter what happens, I won’t leave until the child is born,” Lara promised, a sudden emptiness welling within.
Again Jake nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Another transport vessel will arrive and you can leave with your son, if that is your wish,” Lara continued. “You and your child can return to Earth. You don’t have to be alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Jake entwined his fingers in Lara’s, then forced a smile. “There’s nothing for me on Earth anymore. I belong here. Besides, the next transport won’t even be sent until the Patriot confirms the placement of our colony. Assuming they dispatch another vessel immediately, it will be years before it arrives.”
“Years? But the trip only took twenty-two days.”
“Twenty-two days—ship’s time. While we were in transit, over eighteen years passed on Earth. You know the relativistic effect that warp travel has on time.”
“No,” Lara replied, shaken by Jake’s words. “I didn’t.”
Later that night, Lara lay awake long after Jake had fallen asleep. She could hear him breathing softly beside her. Outside the wind had picked up, and the sound of it rushing through the trees reached her before she felt it buffet their dome. Repeatedly, her thoughts returned to Jake’s revelation on the hillside. Including the time they had spent in transit, over eighteen years had passed since she entered this continuum. True, the arrow of time moved more swiftly here than on her home plane, but eighteen years? Why hadn’t she been contacted? And where was the enemy? Had her failure to complete her mission resulted in some disastrous outcome for her race?
She could wait no longer. Regardless of the risk, she had to know.
Tentatively, she opened her mind and examined the swirl of stars that surrounded her, instantaneously traversing the boundaries of space and time. She found nothing.
Could the Dark Ones have abandone
d their search?
Hoping against hope, she next turned her attention to a neighboring galaxy known to the humans as Andromeda. She recoiled from what she discovered. Inexplicably, hundreds of stars had been reduced to glowing shells of incandescent gas. Only shattered remnants marked their previous existence. One by one, she visited other galaxies in the local cluster. Some were as yet untouched, but many had suffered the same catastrophic fate as Andromeda. As she watched, a sun in a nearby elliptical galaxy blossomed, incinerating its attendant planets in a cataclysmic explosion of light.
At last Lara understood. Appalled, she pulled in the tendrils of her mind. She had counted over three hundred supernovae in Andromeda alone, and many more in other galaxies. Normally, stellar explosions occurred only rarely, coming at the end of a star’s life. These explosions hadn’t happened naturally. With a feeling of profound horror and regret and shame, she realized they were because of her.
Despite her fear of being discovered, Lara again opened her mind and called for help.
Minutes later she shook Jake. “Wake up!”
“What’s the matter?” Jake mumbled groggily. Then, suddenly alert, “The baby? Is it time?”
“That’s not it. Look at me. There’s something I must show you.”
Puzzled, Jake peered into the widening pools of Lara’s eyes. As before, he saw into her mind, this time gazing upon the unthinkable destruction that had taken place in galaxies millions of light years distant. “All those stars exploding . . . What’s going on?” he asked shakily.
“I told you the Dark Ones were hunting me,” Lara answered. “Each of the shattered suns you see once supported a planetary system that was home to intelligent life. Instead of searching among those life forms for me, they simply exploded the primary star, incinerating everything in the system.”
“But why?”
“To winnow me out. Upon destroying all organic life near the star, I would be the only one left.”
“But causing a star to explode. How is that possible?”
Lara shrugged. “It’s a simple matter to enter a sun and disrupt the delicate balance between its gravitational contraction and the radiation pressure from its core.”
“Enter a star? You can do that?”
“Not while confined to this body. But yes, I can do that. As can they.”
Jake passed his hand over his face, stunned by Lara’s words. Entire races annihilated, solar systems destroyed . . . because of her.
“There’s more,” Lara continued somberly. “I just contacted my headquarters. They’re not coming for me. It seems the information I’m carrying is false. From the very first, I was intended to fall into enemy hands. I was meant to be a sacrifice.”
“You’re not going through with it, are you?” Jake demanded angrily.
Lara glanced away. “No. I won’t give my life, not for them. But now that I’ve revealed myself, the Dark Ones will soon arrive. I can escape, but I must leave immediately.”
“Lara—”
“There is no time for discussion,” Lara interrupted. “I need your help. When I vacate this body, it will cease to function. You must take the child now.” She walked to their dome’s medical cabinet, searched through the first-aid canister, and returned with a scalpel. “Cut him out,” she said, extending the knife to Jake.
Realizing what she was asking, Jake shook his head. “Lara, I can’t—”
“You have to. I know what to do. I need your hands to do it.”
Jake backed away. “I’ll . . . I’ll get the doctor,” he stammered.
“There is no time. My enemies will be here in minutes. It must be done now.”
Once more Jake looked into Lara’s eyes and knew, beyond a doubt, that she was telling the truth. He tried to find another way, but couldn’t. As if in a dream, he watched as she lay on the bed. Then the knife was in his hand and Lara was in his mind, and he knew what he had to do.
Fighting to control his trembling, Jake opened Lara’s bedclothes and made the first incision, drawing the scalpel down the midline of her abdomen. Like paint from a brush, a bright trail of red welled up behind the blade. Again he cut, and again, dissecting through layers of skin and muscle and fascia. Through Lara’s mindlink he could feel a shadow of the pain she was enduring. Afraid to look at her face, he focused his attention on the task before him.
Sweat beading his brow, Jake made a final incision through the tough muscular wall of the uterus, cutting where Lara instructed. Clear fluid suddenly washed the wound. He could see the infant, tangled in the umbilical cord. With shaking hands, he reached into the glistening membranes. Carefully, he withdrew the child and brought it into the world.
A perfect baby! A boy!
Seconds later the stillness was broken by the sound of the infant’s cry.
After tying and cutting the cord, Jake knelt beside the bed. By then the child had stopped crying, and his pale blue eyes were open and alert. “May I hold him?” Lara whispered.
Overcome with emotion, Jake placed the baby in Lara’s arms. “What do you want to call him?” he asked softly.
Lara looked up. “If you agree,” she answered, “I would like to name him Adam.”
Jake nodded, his vision blurring. “Cameron would have liked that. I think Megan will approve, too.” Then, taking Lara’s hand, “Tell me something, Lara. Please. I have to know.”
“What?”
Jake swallowed, trying to find words to voice a question that had plagued him from the very beginning. “I know that creating our child was a means for you to escape, at least at first,” he said. “Once we left Earth, you could have stopped the child whenever you wanted. Why didn’t you?”
Lara thought back to the first moment she had first gazed upon this universe. Then, life had meant nothing more to her than a clever arrangement of molecules and atoms. Now, holding the tiny being she had created, she knew that to express her feelings would require far longer than the few seconds she had left. “I don’t know,” she said, her eyes shining, a smile playing across her lips. “To quote a very special human, let’s just say that it seemed like a good idea at the time. And it was.”
Lara squeezed Jake’s hand. Then her fingers slowly opened . . . and she was gone.
She waited for them among the stars, fighting the compulsion to flee. Although she could not yet see the enemy, she felt them approaching. She could also feel their hate, and she was afraid.
On the edge of the galaxy’s nearest arm, she could make out a tiny point of light called Regula. She regarded it one last time, and the planet circling fourth from the center. Her thoughts returned briefly to a bird she had once watched there, moving through a grassy field. Then she resumed her vigil.
There! She could see the Dark Ones now. As expected, they were arrowing directly for the Regula system and the star at its center, intent on their strategy of incineration.
As death hurtled closer, she unfolded her fields, and the interstellar vastness pulsed and coursed and shimmered with the energy of her essence. Still, they did not see her. Fighting her terror, she forced herself to move closer. Suddenly the Dark Ones hesitated. Faltering as if in distress, she turned to flee. Looking back, she saw them veer from Regula, now coming straight for her.
She had no illusions concerning her chance of escape. The time for that had long since passed. Capture was inevitable. Capture, and death. Yet still she fled—drawing away the enemy from Regula—hoping the end would be easy, knowing it would not.
Her final thoughts were of Adam.
Jake stood beside the still form on the bed. Lara appeared peaceful now, at rest. Reaching down, he brushed back a lock of hair from her forehead, then gently closed her eyes and lifted the child from her lifeless embrace. Adam was sleeping, his breath coming easily.
What am I to do with him? Jake wondered numbly. Thinking of Megan, he bundled the infant in a blanket and moved to the door. It was still dark outside, but a faint glow on the horizon heralded the coming dawn. Noticing someth
ing odd in the sky, Jake paused in the doorway.
Shining like a beacon, a strange star traveled the constellations, burning more brightly than any around it. All at once it swelled, grew dazzlingly brilliant, and died to an ember. As it grew dim Jake looked down, noticing that Adam had awakened and was watching, too. The child stared into the heavens until the errant star had disappeared. Then he turned his eyes to Jake. Solemnly, he raised a tiny hand to touch his father’s cheek. And with a flood of comprehension, Jake understood what had happened. He knew what Lara had done, and why, and what it had cost her.
A breeze moved up the valley, carrying with it the smells of the fields and the scent of pine and the sounds of the colony’s livestock waking in their pens. For a long moment Jake stood in the doorway, his mind filled with thoughts of Lara, a stranger from another universe who had given him a child, and a beautiful new world, and in the end, her life.
As light broke over the settlement, Jake turned and gazed one last time at the still form on the bed. Then, holding his son safe in his arms, filled with a sense of sadness and wonder and a deep, abiding gratitude for the mystery of life, he stepped out to face the dawn.
There’s Always a Catch
Dr. Isaac Greenbaum paced the cramped confines of the television-studio waiting room. Struggling to ignore a premonition of disaster that had settled like a stone in the pit of his stomach, he contemplated the probable consequences of his upcoming news announcement. People being what they were, he suspected that he would undoubtedly tumble from his position as the most honored scientist on Earth, instead becoming one of the most reviled.
How did things go so wrong? he wondered miserably. Only days before he had been preparing his research for publication. Then, against his will, he’d become an object of adulation, a situation for which, however flattering, he had been totally unprepared.
Then his real problems began.
Glancing around the claustrophobic cubicle in which they had deposited him to await the broadcast, he spotted yesterday’s newspaper on the coffee table. In bold banner letters, a single word blazed across the top of page one: IMMORTALITY!