The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  I’ll see him again, he thought fiercely. He’s still alive. He has to be.

  “Danyl,” Erl said. “If you are viewing this, then something has gone wrong, you are on the run, and I am not with you. I am recording this on your sixteenth birthday, and I hope you never see it. It is encrypted with an algorithm that only a select few have access to, which should prevent it from being read by anyone except you. I will unencrypt it before I give it to you. But in case it has fallen into the wrong hands, I will be vague about some details in what follows.

  “To begin with: I am not your father. You know this. You are, literally, a son of the City. You are the Cityborn.”

  Danyl didn’t have a clue what he meant.

  “It’s a term you’ve never heard, I know,” Erl said, as if he had read Danyl’s mind across the years. “It’s a term almost no one has heard. I had not heard of it until the day almost two decades ago when the person I will refer to as Prime asked me if I would take on a special mission for the Free Citizens, a revolutionary organization dedicated to a complete change in the way this City is governed.

  “I was recruited into the Free Citizens—the Free, for short—as a young man, after my father, Ensign Hanikin Orillia, evicted a family from their quarters in Fourth Tier simply because he wanted more space for one of his illegal drug factories. I was never close to my father, and my words with him on that occasion ruptured our relationship completely. Nevertheless, I was his sole son and heir, and when he died shortly thereafter, I assumed the Ensignship. I promptly closed the drug factories, at great cost to the family fortune, but I was unmarried and childless and had no one to answer to except myself.

  “And then I was contacted by Prime, a man who had been a friend all my life but whose revolutionary leanings I had never even guessed at. He told me about the Free Citizens and what he hoped to accomplish, and I leaped at the opportunity to help him.

  “Originally, my role within the Free was simply to report on what I learned as I performed my duties as an Officer. My family was low in the hierarchy to begin with and lower still after I closed the drug factories and thus cut ties with some of the higher-ranking Officers, so I had little to report. I managed Third- and Fourth-Tier sanitation, as my father had before me, and though I tried to do a better job of it than he had, the resources I needed were never forthcoming, as they never are within the lower Tiers. Money and materials went to the Officers first; in particular, the raw materials needed to repair and renovate were largely siphoned off to the Officers’ vast Estates.”

  Danyl raised his eyes from the screen for a moment to look around the grand room, then lowered his gaze again.

  “Prime, however, for . . . a number of reasons, had the confidence of First Officer Kranz, and he cultivated it carefully. And so he became one of the few to know of an impending event of City-shaking impact, and he called on me to take on a very special mission—one, he explained, that had to be undertaken by an Officer so far down in the ranks that his disappearance would cause little consternation. I had cut so many ties by shutting down my father’s shadier operations that my fellow Officers would certainly say nothing more than ‘good riddance’ once I disappeared. Quarters Orillia on Eleventh Tier were remarkably large and well-appointed for a family with only the rank of Ensign, thanks to my father’s ill-gotten gains; that would make my disappearance all the more popular, since my neighbors could then maneuver to claim them.

  “I can’t tell you everything Prime told me. I can’t risk committing that to a recording, even one as well encrypted as this one. But I can tell you this: you were born on Twelfth Tier, and you were intended to be raised there as a tool of First Officer Kranz, to be used to cement the Kranz family’s power over the City for generations to come. As part of an effort to subvert Kranz’s plan, you were abducted from Twelfth Tier and delivered to me. My daunting task: to disappear with you and make it appear that both of us had fled far, far away, most likely to our deaths.

  “Prime and I discussed how that might be accomplished, and in the end we settled on a fictitious flight to the Iron Ring, making it appear as if I had taken you and disappeared into the wilderness. We discussed the comments I should make in front of other Officers to indicate my longing for a child and other steps I should take to make our cover story believable. It took us months to set the stage and make the other necessary preparations.

  “On the appointed night, a Free Citizens operative successfully infiltrated the hospital, abducted you, and delivered you into my care. My aircar had been programmed to launch itself, and its autopilot was set to fly it to the Iron Ring and land there, but before its flight even began, I was already descending with you to the Middens.

  “Preparations had been made there, too. The quarters in which we live were secretly excavated for us by robots before you were born. The hovel that was our putative home was built by another operative, who lived there and then conveniently ‘vanished’ when it was time for us to move in.

  “So began the only life you’ve ever known. My mission is a long one, but it has an end date: your twentieth birthday. After that, something else will happen. I cannot tell you what, but I can tell you that you are the sole hope for the ushering in of a new era.”

  On the screen, Erl looked suddenly to the left. “You’ve just come in.” He turned back to the camera. “There is one other thing you should know. While I have watched over you carefully your whole life, even when you were not aware of it, you have had other protection, too: powerful protection. You have been hurt many times while living in the Middens, but your life has never been in danger, and that gives me hope that even if you are viewing this and all our plans have fallen apart, you are still alive and well. Stay that way. Be safe. Be strong. Be free.” He turned his head to the left again. “Coming!” he shouted.

  The screen blanked.

  Danyl blinked hard and swallowed harder.

  “Nothing about me,” Alania said.

  “He said he didn’t know you existed until he was warned you were about to fall out of the City,” Danyl said. “Prime—Beruthi—must have messaged him. But you must be a . . . a Cityborn, too. Whatever that means.” He shook his head. “Twenty years of hiding me in plain sight in the Middens . . . but for what? What is a Cityborn? How can I—how can we—possibly be key to ‘ushering in a new era’?”

  “I don’t know,” Alania said. She got to her feet. “But I know who does.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE MAN ALANIA had always thought of as cold and distant (but whom she was now apparently expected to trust completely) stood at the window, staring out at the vast panorama of the Heartland. He spoke without turning around as Alania led Danyl through the door. “So. What did Erl tell you?”

  “That’s not how this works,” Alania said. “You tell us what you were going to tell us, and we’ll see if it matches up with what Erl said.” Erl had said nothing about her. As Danyl had pointed out, he hadn’t even known she existed—or at least he’d claimed he hadn’t. But Beruthi—Prime—had. From the very beginning, Beruthi had.

  “Very well.” Beruthi turned. “Let’s go back into the other room. It’s more comfortable.”

  “Let’s stay here,” Alania said. It was silly, but she took perverse pleasure in not doing anything Beruthi told her to do. He’s not my guardian anymore. He never was. He was always something else.

  Beruthi sighed. “Have it your way.” He turned to them, the light from the window casting one side of his thin, tanned face into shadow. “You are—both of you—something Kranz dubbed the Cityborn. You are also brother and sister.”

  So it’s true. She glanced at Danyl, who gave her a small smile. We’re family. She looked back at Beruthi. “Who were our parents?”

  “Your father,” Beruthi said, “is Staydmore Kranz.”

  “No!” The word burst out of her in revulsion.

  “I’m afraid so.”

 
“And our mother?” Danyl asked. From the tightness of his voice, Alania could tell he didn’t like Beruthi’s revelation any more than she did.

  Beruthi’s gaze didn’t waver. “The Captain.”

  Alania’s mouth fell open. Danyl gasped, then burst out, “That’s impossible! The Captain has to have been dead for centuries. Erl told me she’s just a mythical figurehead the Officers use to prop up their rule.”

  “Erl told you what you needed to believe,” Beruthi said. “But he knows the truth, although he is one of the few who does, even among the Free Citizens. Only I know everything about the Cityborn, the City . . . and Staydmore Kranz.” He paused. “You both look a little pale. Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”

  Alania folded her arms. “We’re fine,” she said tightly. “Go on. I’m dying to hear how we can possibly be children of a myth . . . and a monster.”

  “The Captain is not a myth,” Beruthi said. Alania noted he didn’t deny that Kranz was a monster. “She still lives, and her continued life is vital to both the operation and control of the City.”

  “She’s actually giving orders?” Danyl put in.

  “Nothing so simple,” Beruthi said. “She has no political control. Kranz does what he wants, as the Kranz dynasty has since First Officer Thomas Kranz seized control at the founding of the City.”

  “What?” Alania had never heard that.

  “There’s more,” Beruthi said. “Staydmore Kranz is not really Staydmore Kranz. He’s a clone, body and mind, of Thomas Kranz.”

  “A clone!” Alania blinked. “But . . . cloning technology doesn’t exist anymore. It was used to rapidly multiply livestock and crops right after the Awakening, but then it was outlawed. The equipment was destroyed.”

  “You learned your lessons well,” Beruthi said. A small smile flickered across his face. “Your adventure on Fifth focused your mind, as I intended.” The smile vanished. “But in truth, one cloning unit has remained operational—one that is used every generation to create the replacement for the current First Officer.”

  “You said a clone, body and mind,” Danyl said sharply. “Erl made sure I learned my lessons well, too. Cloning produces a genetic copy, an identical twin. It doesn’t copy the mind. How could it?”

  “It can’t,” Beruthi agreed. “But cloning is not the only ancient and outlawed technology at work here. The other is one you will not have read about, because it has always been kept secret: nanobots.”

  Alania cocked her head to one side. “Nano means microscopic. Microscopic robots?”

  Beruthi inclined his head. Alania glanced at Danyl, who looked as bewildered as she felt. She turned to Beruthi. “What do they do?”

  “There are a lot of things they could do, some of them quite destructive,” Beruthi said. “But the ones I’m speaking of are injected into human beings.”

  “What?” Alania said, horrified. “Robots inside a person?”

  “Yes,” Beruthi said. “They can protect that person from disease, speed the healing of injuries, extend life . . . and some of them, some very special ones, can go to work inside the brain, rewriting memories, altering personalities. Nanobots, in other words, are a way to program a human being just like you would program a robot.”

  “And Kranz has these things inside him?” Danyl said.

  Beruthi nodded. “He does. And Thomas Kranz, the original Kranz, carried nanobots of his own: nanobots that recorded selected memories and elements of his mind. Thomas injected a colony of his nanobots into his clone when the clone was an infant. During childhood and adolescence, the nanobots remained only partially active, providing some physical protection but not affecting the clone’s mind. When he was old enough, his nanobots were fully activated. The already extant physical protection was further enhanced, but more importantly, the nanobots rewrote the clone’s brain. Thomas Kranz’s memories and motivations have been handed down from clone to clone in that fashion ever since. Our First Officer Kranz, the seventh successive clone of Thomas Kranz, doesn’t just know the truth about the founding of the City . . . he remembers it. Or at least he remembers what Thomas Kranz wanted him to remember.”

  Alania drew in a deep breath. “That’s . . . mind-boggling.”

  “Literally,” Beruthi said.

  “But all of this must be Kranz’s deepest, darkest secret,” Danyl said sharply. “How do you know about it?”

  “Because of my own family history,” Beruthi said. “Since the Awakening, the Beruthis have had a monopoly on the construction of high-level robotic technology. Among the items my factory manufactures are special devices for both the maintenance of the Kranz nanobots—something which must be done every few months—and their activation. Not that my ancestors, who did not inherit the memories of the first Beruthi, knew what those devices were for. The manufacturing process is entirely automated and takes place in a sealed room solely on the First Officer’s orders.”

  “But you found out,” Alania said.

  Beruthi nodded. “Yes. Because nothing lasts forever. The Science Officer is responsible for injecting and activating the nanobots in each Kranz clone when the time is right. Another secret duty handed down from generation to generation—the City seems to be rife with such things. The nanobots are self-assembling: a few are withdrawn from the blood of the progenitor clone and provided with a ‘stew’ of raw materials, allowing them to replicate. But as Science Officer Prentis prepared the replicated nanobots for injection into Kranz’s clone, Falkin, she found that an unacceptable number of them were inert—they had been assembled incorrectly. Others showed signs of less fatal faults. She began to wonder what state Kranz’s nanobots were in. Rather bravely, she broached the subject with Kranz, who allowed her to test his nanobots’ programming by comparing his recollection of certain events against accounts left by previous First Officers. She found that our Kranz has both missing memories and false memories, an indication that this problem has been growing generation by generation. How it has affected Kranz, we can’t be certain, but we do know how the copies of his nanobots affected his clone.”

  “Falkin,” Alania said. “The one who died in an aircar crash.”

  Beruthi nodded.

  “I saw that crash!” Danyl said. “I was in the Last Chance Market. The aircar flew straight into the ground.”

  “It was suicide,” Beruthi said. “When Falkin’s nanobots were activated, they rewrote his brain, as they had for every Kranz clone before him—but this time the result was utter paranoia, to the point where he saw death as his only escape.”

  “But if he was that paranoid, and Kranz’s nanobots are also faulty . . .” Alania said slowly.

  “Then Kranz could be tending toward paranoia himself,” Beruthi finished. “Which is one reason his rule must be overthrown.”

  “Why did Prentis tell you all this?” Danyl demanded.

  Beruthi raised an eyebrow. “You sound a little paranoid yourself.”

  “I think I’ve earned it,” Danyl growled, and Alania couldn’t disagree.

  “Prentis didn’t tell me this,” Beruthi said. “I don’t think she knows that I know. Kranz himself came to me and told me about her concerns and . . . several other things, including the truth about what is manufactured in that secret space in my factory.”

  “Why would he trust you with that?” Alania heard the anger in her voice but didn’t care. Her patience was wearing thin. “And what has any of this to do with us? Or with the Captain? You said she was our mother, but you haven’t explained how that’s even possible!”

  “Kranz chose to trust me because he was—he is—desperate,” Beruthi said quietly. “For two reasons.” He turned and looked out over the Heartland again. The setting sun had almost reached the peaks of the western Iron Ring, and far, far away, the City glinted gold, like a nugget of precious metal in the Heartland’s green fields. “The first reason was very perso
nal. Falkin was the only viable embryo created by the aging cloning equipment, and he was the last that will ever be created. Like so much else in the City, that cloning unit is now junk, and we no longer have the knowledge, tools, or materials to repair it. Even before Falkin’s nanobot activation failed so spectacularly, Kranz knew the Kranz line was coming to an end.”

  “And the second reason?” Alania asked.

  Beruthi faced them again. “The second reason is that the Captain is dying.”

  “You still haven’t explained how she can even be alive,” Danyl said.

  “Technology, of course,” Beruthi said impatiently. “Technology from the founding of the City that we could not replicate today but that continues to function. Including, of course, nanobots: her body is swarming with them.” He spread his hands. “But even founding-era technology has its limitations, and those limitations have now been reached. Yes, the Captain is still alive . . . but she won’t be much longer.”

  “Most people already think she’s dead,” Danyl said. “How could it matter if she died for real?”

  “I’ll get to that,” Beruthi said. “For the moment, just accept that it would be a very bad thing if the Captain died . . . bad for everyone. There must be a Captain, and therefore there must be a replacement Captain. And because of . . . what the Captain does, that replacement must carry certain genetic tags.

  “The failure of the cloning unit not only meant no more Kranzes could be produced, it meant no clone of the Captain could be produced. But in his desperation, Kranz saw an opportunity: an opportunity to combine the special qualities of the Captain with the Kranzes’ ancient memories and sense of duty to renew the City and Heartland. To make it happen, he needed help—my help. And so, shortly after Falkin’s birth, almost four years before the two of you were born, he told me of his plan to create children who would be heirs of both the Captain and the First Officer. He called them the Cityborn, conceived in vitro by the union of the Captain’s preserved eggs and his donated sperm.”