The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  Alania shuddered. “Ew.” Learning that she was Kranz’s biological daughter was the most horrifying thing that had happened to her in two horrifying days.

  Beruthi smiled a little ruefully. “Yes. But remember, none of us can choose our parents. My own father . . . was not exactly a wonderful human being.” He shook his head. “Never mind. One of these Cityborn, Kranz said, would ascend to the Captaincy once fully mature. All of them—at least, any who had the necessary genetic tags—had to be protected until then so that there would be . . . spares.”

  “By you?” Alania said. “Is that why you were my ‘guardian’?”

  “Partly,” Beruthi said. “But your true protection, you have had since birth.” He glanced at Danyl. “Both of you.”

  Alania remembered Erl’s recorded words: 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.

  Danyl must have been remembering that, too. “Some protection,” he said. “Considering how many scars I’ve got.”

  “Yes, you’ve been hurt, but you’ve always healed quickly and without infection,” Beruthi said. “Alania, living a much more sheltered life, would have been less aware of it, but it’s the same for both of you. Alania, I see you’ve suffered minor wounds since I saw you at your birthday party, but they’re already fully healed.”

  Alania’s hand went to her forehead. It was true—all that remained of the cut there and the one on her cheek was a slight tenderness. The skin was smooth, and the last synthiskin patch—the one Chrima had put on her—was gone; she didn’t even know when it had fallen off. She had a sudden, horrible feeling she knew where this was going, and an instant later, Beruthi confirmed it.

  “When you were born,” he said, “each of you was injected with your own colony of nanobots. But not drawn from Kranz. Yours come from—”

  “The Captain,” Alania breathed.

  “The Captain,” Beruthi said.

  Out the window, over Beruthi’s shoulder, Alania saw a guard robot roll past. The thought that her own bloodstream contained robots . . . she swallowed. Maybe finding out she was Kranz’s daughter wasn’t the most horrible thing to happen to her in the past two days.

  “They’re not fully activated yet,” Beruthi went on, “but they are still capable of protecting you from infection, autoimmune diseases, and cancer, as well as reducing bleeding and rebuilding nerves and connective tissue in the event of an injury.” He spread his hands. “They would not have protected you from, say, brain-destroying head trauma or disembowelment, but fortunately the risk of such things is low, at least on Twelfth Tier.” He glanced at Danyl. “Somewhat higher in the Middens.”

  “Somewhat,” Danyl said quietly.

  “Why weren’t they fully activated?” Alania demanded.

  “Because your bodies were still developing. If fully activated, the nanobots would have greatly slowed that—you’d both still be prepubescent. Erl did increase the effectiveness of yours temporarily a couple of times, Danyl, when you managed to get yourself seriously injured. And both of you, of course, have had your nanobots carefully monitored and tuned as required, as your bodies changed.”

  “Tuned?” Danyl frowned. Then his eyes widened. “Oh. The docbot!”

  Beruthi nodded. “An archaic model, should anyone ever see it who shouldn’t, but heavily modified.” He glanced at Alania. “It was far easier in Alania’s case, since she lived in my house and underwent regular medical checkups.”

  Alania looked at her hands. Robots. Inside me. She felt violated all over again, as she had when she’d discovered the cameras in her room. The ones Beruthi insisted had not been his idea, but by order of First Officer Kranz . . . her father.

  Not that that made her feel any better.

  “And what part of all this required you to be so cold and distant?” she demanded. “Yes, I lived in your house. But you may as well have been a robot yourself for all the warmth you showed me.” She felt alarmingly close to tears. “I kept wanting that, you know. As a little girl, at all those birthday parties, I’d see other girls’ families, other girls’ parents. I wanted a daddy like the ones my friends had, and instead I got you: an Officer. Always an Officer. Never a human. Never a father . . . or even a father figure.”

  Beruthi looked down, rubbing the ring finger of his left hand. “I’m so sorry about that, Alania,” he said softly. “Kranz gave me strict orders not to get too close to you. He didn’t want anything to interfere with his plans, wanted me to be willing to hand you over to him when the time came. You don’t know how many times I wanted to pick you up when you were little, cuddle you, read to you, hold you tight . . . but I couldn’t. I couldn’t jeopardize everything that way. Erl could, with Danyl, and I envied him that, too.”

  Alania’s throat felt tight. She wanted both to believe Beruthi and to scream at him, call him a liar, because it was almost easier to think that he had never wanted to give her love and affection than to think he had wanted to but hadn’t because he was following orders. In the end, she said nothing.

  “What happens when these nanobots are fully activated?” Danyl asked.

  “First,” Beruthi said, “they will work much more aggressively to prevent harm to your body.”

  “And second?”

  “Second, the Captain’s nanobots will allow you to control most of your bodily functions consciously.” He looked from Alania to Danyl and back again. “They have to give you that ability because it is the combination of nanobots and unique genetic characteristics that allows the Captain to become the City.”

  “Become . . .” Alania blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Danyl asked if the Captain is giving orders. She’s not, in the traditional sense . . . but in another way, she is. The nanobots and the genetic modifications allow the Captain to interface with the City as if it were her own body.

  “In essence, the City is a living organism with the Captain as its brain and nervous system. She can control its power and water and ventilation, maintenance robots, everything that is plugged into the City’s computer network, merely by thought. Or without thought—as her brain regulates her body’s functions, it also regulates the City’s.”

  “But the City is falling apart,” Danyl said.

  “Because the Captain is dying. After all these centuries. Which is why she needs an heir.” He looked from one to the other of them. “The Cityborn.”

  “Why are there two of us, then?” Danyl demanded. “Why me in the Middens and Alania on Twelfth Tier? Surely there can be only one heir to the Captain.”

  “There can,” Beruthi said. “And our plan has always been that it would be you, Danyl.”

  Alania blinked at him. “But then why . . .”

  “Your purpose was to keep Kranz happy. As long as he had you, and you seemed safely tucked away, he wouldn’t be keeping an eye out for the mysteriously vanished Danyl. But we never intended for you to become Captain. In fact, four years ago, after his clone died, I had to talk Kranz out of making you Captain right away.”

  “I overheard part of that conversation,” Alania said, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Beruthi’s eyes widen in surprise, though he schooled his expression again quickly before he continued.

  “Fortunately, I had the perfect excuse for why that couldn’t be done—perfect, because it happened to be true. I reminded him of what I just told you: that your brain and body were still not sufficiently developed. I promised Kranz I would keep you safe until you turned twenty, and then he could have you. Knowing he would insist you be sent to him the day after your birthday, I made plans to have you kidnapped before you could get to Quarters Kranz.” He grimaced. “And what a fuckup that turned out to be.”

  Alania looked at him, and
a gaping void opened inside her as a dark fact she had pushed deep down in her thoughts came bobbing back to the surface. “What did you intend to do to me after you kidnapped me to keep me out of Kranz’s clutches?” she asked softly. “The same thing Yvelle did to the third baby who tested positive for the Captain’s genes?”

  Beruthi shook his head violently. “No! Alania, you wouldn’t have been harmed. If the kidnapping had gone as planned—if those extra Provosts hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time—you would simply have vanished. I would have smuggled you out of the City, and you’d have lived here, safely tucked away. As Kranz poured all his efforts into finding you, we—the Free—would have taken Danyl to the Thirteenth Tier, installed him as Captain, and seized control of the City. And then you would have been free to return to your old home . . . our home . . . on Twelfth. Or go wherever else you wished.”

  “So why did that baby have to die?” Alania demanded. “Why did you make Yvelle do that?”

  Beruthi set his jaw. “A third Cityborn was too difficult to deal with. I identified you as Cityborn long before Yvelle arrived and had one of the caregiver robots remove you from the ward until Yvelle had come and gone so that Kranz would have one Cityborn to focus his attention on while we raised our Cityborn in secret. Yvelle’s orders were to take the first baby she found who tested positive to Erl. Any who did not test positive, she was to leave alone. But any that did . . . had to be eliminated.” His met Alania’s eyes steadily. “This is a revolution, Alania. There are always casualties in revolutions.”

  “How can you be so callous?” For the first time, Alania was glad her guardian had never shown her affection, because what she was learning about him now would have been devastating if she had ever begun to think of him as her father.

  “There’s callousness enough on Kranz’s side. We must be as hard as he is if we are to defeat him. Those babies who didn’t have the genetic tags, the ones I told Yvelle to leave alone? Kranz had them all killed.”

  Alania gasped. Our brothers and sisters . . .

  “There’s something I still don’t understand,” Danyl said. “You said Kranz wants a Captain who is also an heir of the Kranzes. But the only nanobots we carry are the Captain’s—we don’t carry the nanobots that bear Kranz’s memories. So how . . . ?”

  “That’s also where I came in,” Beruthi said. For some reason, he looked only at Alania as he explained. “Once Kranz gave me access to the secret manufactory for the nanobot maintenance and programming equipment, I learned how to modify the Captain’s nanobots—far less degraded than Kranz’s—to accept programming from the Kranz ones. Kranz’s plan was for me to turn the Captain’s nanobots, over time, into modified versions of his own. That way they would do everything for the Cityborn candidate that the Captain’s nanobots do but also rewrite the Cityborn’s mind with the memories of Thomas Kranz.”

  Alania thought she might throw up. “So when my nanobots were being ‘tuned’ during those regular checkups, when I was lying in the docbot . . .”

  “You were being prepared to be exactly what Kranz wants: a copy of himself with the power of the Captain,” Beruthi said. “Which is why we had to make certain you never made it to his Quarters.”

  “And me?” Danyl demanded.

  Beruthi looked at him at last. “Your nanobots were not programmed with Thomas Kranz’s memories. When you become Captain, you will be free to act in the best interest of the people of the City rather than Kranz and his Officers.”

  “You sound awfully certain,” Alania said. “As certain as you were that you could safely kidnap me off the streets of Twelfth Tier before I got to Quarters Kranz. And look how that turned out.” As the shock and horror of what they’d been told fell away, fury boiled up to take its place. “You expect us to trust you. You expect us to leap at the chance to help the Free. But answer me this: do other people join you of their own free will?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Knowing the risks?”

  “Of course. They know what happens on Tenth as well as anyone.”

  “So they join freely. But we didn’t. We’re nothing but pawns to you.” She took a step toward him. “That baby that Yvelle killed was one of us, a Cityborn, our sister. Did she volunteer, knowing the risks? Of course not. She didn’t know anything. She was our sister, and you had her killed without remorse. And then Kranz killed the ones who were left, also our brothers and sisters, babies you could have rescued.” The words rushed out of her, borne on the hot wind of her anger. “So why should I believe you when you say you felt affection for me? Why should I believe you when you say you would have simply hidden me away somewhere and not killed me? Why should I believe anything you say? And why should I help the kind of people who could order the murder of a baby to take control of the City?”

  Beruthi looked almost shocked. “Alania, we’re not . . .”

  “What?” Alania said. “As bad as Kranz? You could have fooled me.” She took another step toward him, eyes locked on his face. “It’s not just that baby, either. How many River People died yesterday? Except for Yvelle, they didn’t volunteer or know the risks. They died because Erl—you, ultimately—sent us to them. You’ve made Danyl and me accessories to your murders!” Her anger swelled so much then that it choked her to silence at last.

  Beruthi took a deep breath, straightened his back, and met her gaze squarely. “I did what I thought was best, Alania. I did it because it seems to me that the end we are trying to reach more than justifies the unsavory means we’ve had to use to get there.” Behind him, the sun still lit the distant City, but it was more red than gold now, a tiny sliver of scarlet like a shard of bloodstained glass.

  Danyl stepped forward to stand at her left shoulder, and she could almost feel the heat of his anger radiating from him. “And what end is that, exactly?” he snarled. “To make me Captain? What would that mean? What would it mean to me?”

  “It would mean we’d finally have a Captain who understood what life was like for those who were not Officers, someone who wouldn’t just be a figurehead exploited by the First Officer,” Beruthi began. “It would—”

  “Not enough,” Danyl snapped, cutting him off.

  “No?” Beruthi glared at him. “Then how about this? It would mean the City would not collapse into utter chaos.”

  “Explain.”

  “I told you—the Captain is dying. She’s been dying for a very long time, but the process is accelerating. If she dies without being replaced, the City’s infrastructure will completely shut down. No power on any of the Tiers. Elevators inoperable. Doors sealed shut. No water flowing. No air circulating. No way to get food in or to get anyone out except by aircar, and do you really think the Officers would gladly ferry lower-Tier denizens out to their Estates and Retreats?

  “There has to be a Captain, or the City dies, and thousands of people die with it. And only one of you can take her place. Only you two carry the Captain’s genetic modifications encoded in your genomes. Only you two have her specialized nanobots. Alania is compromised, because Kranz has programmed her nanobots to overwrite her memories at his command. That leaves you.

  “Danyl, this is our last—our only!—opportunity to make things better, to fix things. We’ve worked for twenty years to seize this moment, to put in place a new Captain who is not under Kranz’s control.”

  Danyl was silent for a moment. “How would it work?” he said at last.

  “The mechanism is automated,” Beruthi said. “It’s just like plugging any standard component into any other system. You unplug the current Captain, remove her from the system, and plug yourself in.”

  “And the Captain has been ‘plugged in’ for centuries?” Alania said in horror. “No wonder she’s ‘failing.’ She must be insane!”

  “She may be,” Beruthi said. “Or she may have no human consciousness left at all. Kranz didn’t tell me everything he kn
ows about her. In particular, he didn’t tell me how she has been kept under the control of the First Officers all this time. He claims Thomas Kranz seized control from her to save the City from disaster. That’s what his memories tell him.”

  “You keep talking about her genetic modifications,” Alania said. “But . . . who did those? Who created the Captain? City history begins with the City fully operational, the Captain sequestered on Thirteenth, the First Officer in charge, and the Awakening of the First Citizens, who had no memories of what came before. Do you know anything about what came before?”

  Did Beruthi hesitate before answering? If so, it was only an instant. “No,” he said. “I don’t. I have no more knowledge of the Great Mystery than anyone else.”

  I don’t believe you, Alania thought.

  “However we got here,” Beruthi rushed on, “if we’re going to improve things, we need a new Captain, a young Captain with the will and the wherewithal to wrest control of the City from Kranz.”

  “And give it to who?” Danyl demanded. “You?”

  “You would be Captain. Not I.”

  “Removing the Officers from power sounds like a recipe for anarchy. How would that be an improvement?”

  “At least anarchy provides space for something better to take root,” Beruthi snapped. Then he took another deep breath and softened his tone. “But anarchy is not our goal. The Free Citizens have had more than twenty years to draw up plans for seizing control of the City the moment a new Captain takes command. Shut down access to Twelfth and Eleventh Tiers, open the cells on Tenth, and there is no Officer presence to speak of. Some Provosts will likely attempt to preserve the old order, but we count several Provosts among the Free—many Provosts are recruited from the lower Tiers, after all. The Free will be alerted to the imminent changeover. Once you take control, they’ll act.”

  “And why will this new world be better than the current one?” Alania demanded.