Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  She opened the fridge and found it well stocked with bottles of a recreational drug and packaged nano-food. Hunting and gathering indeed! When she opened a locker door, she sucked in her breath and stared at the standard-issue Pol’s laser gun on the shelf. What on Earth was Aard doing with one of those? Heart racing, Julie pulled open a drawer and found several pairs of folded and freshly laundered black jackets and slacks. Her chest pounded as she examined the clothing. The material was high quality durafabric, standard Pol issue. Her hand felt something hard tucked underneath. She pulled the clothing away and gasped at what she saw. A Pol helmet!

  Abruptly the chittering murmurs in her head rose to a shrill chorus and she spun to face the door, seizing the laser gun. Aard stood at the hanger door, his shoulder leaning against the door jam, arms crossed, and eyeing her with cautious curiosity. “What are you doing here, Julie?” His voice was edged with annoyance.

  “I could ask the same of you, Aard.”

  “Curiosity kills the cat,” he smirked.

  “Which one? Felix the cat or the...Pol-cat?” she asked, pulling the gun into view with a half-cocked smile of her own. “Yours?”

  The smirk disappeared. “So you found…” he trailed off as she pulled out his Pol uniform with her free hand then threw it back.

  “In pretty nice condition too.” Her voice grew sharp, “Who exactly are you?”

  He shrugged. “Just another Icarian trying to survive.”

  “A Pol? In the heath?” She gave him a mocking incredulous look. “Try again, buddy boy.”

  He compressed his lips. “So, you want to know how I got here?” He gazed past her, eyes focused on the past. “I was a no-good drunk. Couldn’t keep a job. Never had a problem getting one because of my superior cognitive abilities. But every time I messed up. It always seemed to end with me slugging someone, because they called me a—” He broke off, pursing his lips and stealing a strange glance into her eyes for a moment. “I ended up wandering the inner-city, drunk and useless until a man named Victor came along, cleaned me up, believed in me. He gave me a job in the Pol force and gave me this mission.”

  Something he’d said nudged a memory to the surface. It finally drifted up and she stared at him, seeing the resemblance to that scruffy fifteen-year old SAM had shown her on its database years ago. “You’re a veemeld too. You’re Isaard Henigen.” His stunned look told her she’d guessed right. “I researched you when SAM and I were trying to find Prometheus, the test case that started the whole Darwin mess,” she explained. “We found that there were only a few of us, like Prometheus, who scored perfectly on the STAT-LOG exams. Before I discovered that I was in fact Prometheus, I thought you were.”

  “Yeah, it was you who brought me to Victor Burke’s attention, with your research on Prometheus. So, now you know everything.”

  “Except why someone like you is living out here.”

  “I’d have thought that someone with your enhanced cognitive abilities would have figured that out by now.”

  “Okay.” She firmed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. “They sent you here to watch us...” He raised a brow. She amended, “to watch me.”

  “Very good,” he nodded, ankles crossing as he continued leaning against the door in a relaxed pose. Deceptively relaxed, she thought, noticing that he kept his hand in his pocket. Probably on a concealed weapon.

  “And the reason would depend on who sent you.” Was it Victor Burke, the mayor of Icaria-5 when she left?

  “Right.” He nodded, not offering more.

  “So, what do we do now, Aard? Now that I’ve blown your cover.” She gave him a crooked smile. “And I have your gun.” She didn’t exactly aim it at him, but held it loosely in his direction. Its grip brought back dark memories of other times she’d held such a weapon.

  “Well, you do ask the hard questions, Julie.” He pushed himself from the door jam and pulled his hand from his pocket, gripping a small laser pistol, which he aimed at her abdomen. She tightened her grip on the gun and tracked it toward his chest. To her surprise he lowered his weapon. “Well, I suppose now that we’re stalemated, I’ll just have to leave,” he said.

  She blinked, stunned. “You don’t mean that. Just pack your bags and leave, give up your surveillance?”

  “I have my orders. And they don’t include taking you prisoner at least not now, anyway.” Her stomach squirmed at his inference. She’d fled Icaria accused of murder and sedition. If he brought her back it would be as a prisoner. “And, like you already said,” he went on, “You’ve blown my cover.”

  Suddenly drained, Julie lowered her gun. “Before you go, can you at least tell me why you’ve been watching my family and me? You owe us that much, Aard. After we trusted you all this time.”

  He put his gun back in his pocket and sighed. “You’re right. And I’m going to miss Angel. She’s a beautiful girl, Julie. You should be proud.” He scratched his beard absently and frowned. “I only made contact with you six years ago but I’ve been out here since you left the city. Do you think they’d have just let you go? You’re Prometheus. The only person on Earth who could talk to your A.I. in your head without Interact-SYM.” He studied her for a moment and sighed. “Surely you don’t think you actually escaped. Burke let you get away. He has the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. He always knew where you were, inside or outside of Icaria. I was sent to keep an eye on you, make sure you—and any of your offspring—remained safe. For possible future needs.”

  She fought the involuntary shudder that ran through her at his mentioning her offspring and ominous possible future needs.

  “I’m one of Burke’s carriers,” Aard explained. “Everything I see, hear...feel...he can too.”

  “Brain implant?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “When you had Angel, I was supposed to make contact once she was five.”

  The magic number five, she thought, swallowing down bitter memories of when her life had irrevocably changed at that age. She balled her hand into a fist as a fierce protectiveness for her daughter burned inside her. The number of times she’d left Angel alone in Aard’s company...

  “I was also instructed to train you in survival and combat techniques.”

  “In addition to reporting on my developing abilities, no doubt,” she said, eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Yeah. They keep getting better, don’t they?”

  “You’d know,” she retorted, recalling how he’d frequently tested her enhanced vision, hearing and reflexes like a scientist. There was a moment of silence. “And not just me,” she breathed, starting to understand the scope of it all.

  He nodded, pursing his lips in a tight frown. “Yeah, Angel too.”

  She bridled a surging fear and searched deep into his eyes. “Why, Aard?” Part of her didn’t want to hear his answer. A vision of Gaia’s brooding face slid like an oil slick into her mind. Gaia was easily the most beautiful—and most dangerous—woman Julie had ever met. Like the treacherous Venus Fly Trap, she’d lured too many prey into submission with her sweet nectar: striking midnight hair that shone like silk, eyes the colour of an enigmatic sea and a voice as dark and rich as coffee. Then she struck them dumb and ate them with her sharp wit and cruel design. Gaia had relinquished her mayorship of Icaria-5 to one of her underlings, Victor Burke, to serve North Am’s governing body, the Circle. What she never told Burke was that she’d continued to run his town through her gestapo, the Secret Pols. Was she still?

  The woman’s nefarious plan to rule Icaria through a cadre of trained veemelds, capable of communicating with the A.I. network through Interact-SYM and immune to the disease devastating the rest of Icaria, was a scary thought. Plainly, it was controlled genocide she had in mind. Then there were her specific plans for Julie—the only veemeld who didn’t need Interact-SYM to talk to her A.I. Plans for the DP, that awful place no one ever came out of. The r
eason Julie had to stay away.

  Aard smiled grimly. “I think you know why. Let’s just say that some would rather you didn’t exist and will do anything to make sure.” Like the rest of Icaria, she thought miserably. “Hence me, your bodyguard.”

  She couldn’t seem to get away from bodyguards, Julie thought bleakly, recalling the awful scene in the Den. Frank, the Pol she’d foolishly become infatuated with, had scornfully revealed to her that the only reason he’d hung out with her was that he’d been assigned as her unofficial body guard, and was secretly looking to avenge what her father had done to his.

  “As for who, I can’t say,” Aard continued. “But you’re a smart woman and you can probably guess that too.” He stepped past her to his storage locker and gathered up his Pol uniform and other equipment into a pack, then came beside her and reached for the laser pistol.

  She glanced down at the weapon, warm in her sweaty hand, and was about to hand it to him, then twitched it out of his grasp. Their eyes met. “Collateral,” she said with a lopsided smile, pointing the gun at him again. “Good bye, Aard.”

  He frowned but nodded. “There’ll be someone else, you know,” he said, closing his backpack and hoisting it over one shoulder. “There’ll always be someone, Julie,” he said over his shoulder as he turned and left the room for the hanger. She followed him into the hanger bay. “They’ll never leave you alone,” Aard went on, turning to face her again with a pointed look. “Not Prometheus and her gifted daughter.”

  “It’s a pretty big planet, Aard. They’ll have to find us first.”

  “Well, I wish you luck,” he said, not sounding convinced, then turned to enter his ship. He stopped and fished something out of his pack. “Here,” he said, brusquely nodding his head toward her and tossing her a small package. “Laser cells. You might need them.” Then he studied her briefly with what looked like regret. “Watch your back, Julie,” he added and climbed into his vehicle.

  Standing where he’d left her, she watched him enter the cockpit. Within moments he’d started its rumbling engine, made the necessary adjustments, then he nodded gravely to her and brought the vehicle with a shudder off the ground. The ship threw itself out of the hanger with a blast of hot air that stifled her breath and sent her hair flying behind her. She stared out at the disappearing shuttle for several moments then let herself collapse on the workbench chair and exhaled slowly.

  As she had quietly feared all these years, it had started again. No, she amended her thought: it had never ended, it just finally caught up with her.

  The safety net that Daniel had so assiduously built around his family had torn. And she’d done the tearing. She’d lured Icaria’s spies and murderers out here and put her family in danger just by being who and what she was—something Daniel refused to even consider. How was she going to tell him?

  Perhaps she wouldn’t, Julie decided recklessly and felt the thrill of anxiety knot inside her. She’d watch and see what happened. And if she had to, she’d do something about it, Julie thought, with a glance down at the gun.

  4

  Angel bounded into their campsite as Julie sliced winter carrots for supper. “I still can’t find Aard, Mom,” she said, coming alongside her mother.

  Julie responded without looking up, “I don’t think you’re going to find him, honey.”

  Daniel, who’d been patching the roof of their hut, looked down at them with sudden interest. Aard had disappeared the same time that Julie had for several hours and then she’d returned with bruises and cuts she’d unconvincingly explained. Something happened that she didn’t want to discuss and he wondered if it had to do with Aard’s mysterious absence.

  “What do you mean?” Angel asked, frowning.

  Julie turned to her daughter. “I mean when you checked his cabin on the hill, it looked like he’d taken things with him, right? Like for a trip?”

  “Yeah, but not to go away.”

  Daniel climbed down from the roof and joined the girls. “Maybe he went to Icaria after all,” he suggested. “It’s over four hundred kilometres away. And he’s usually gone for a month.”

  “He would’ve told me,” Angel insisted.

  Daniel watched Julie’s face and caught the expression, subtle but definitely there. Her mouth had tightened and he read a defensive look in her eyes. Did she know why Aard left? She might even have had something to do with it.

  “What if he fell off the cliff or something?” Angel said, her voice rose to a pleading squeak. “I’ll go look—”

  “No!” Julie’s sharp voice startled Daniel. She gripped her daughter’s arms firmly and leaned her face close. “Don’t ever go there again. I told you, it’s dangerous. Don’t make me ground you.”

  Angel stared at her mother, briefly dumbstruck by her vehemence. Then her eyes flashed with defiance, blue ice glaring into Julie’s forest-fire green. But the mother’s fire easily melted the daughter’s icy resolve and Angel lowered her eyes with a pout. “All right, mother.” She always called Julie mother when she wasn’t happy with her.

  “Aard knows how to take care of himself, honey. He’s too cautious to get hurt.”

  “Then where is he?” came the retort.

  They’d come full circle, Daniel thought with a sigh. Julie glanced at him, her face bridling with anxiety. She returned his silent question by setting her mouth and went back to her vegetables. The subject was dropped.

  ***

  “We have to break camp,” Julie announced.

  “What?” Daniel and Angel said in unison. They were doing math exercises on the outdoor table he’d built when Julie returned from her herb forage. “Why?” Angel asked the obvious question. She’d pushed out her lower lip and clenched her hands.

  Daniel noticed that Julie was trying to hide a nervous distress. A glance at her satchel revealed that she hadn’t collected many herbs either. Her buckskin shorts and sleeveless faded blue shirt were smudged from scrambling along the glacial till slopes. Where’d she been exploring this time? She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

  “We can’t leave,” Angel insisted before Julie had time to explain why they had to leave. She leaped up from her chair. “Aard’s still missing!”

  “I’m sorry, Angel. But it’s too dangerous here,” Julie said. “I saw some animal tracks and a den not far off on that ridge,” she pointed. “The cougar that almost ate you wasn’t a lone migrant.” Daniel knew she was lying. She never was good at it, he thought. But, then, what had she seen that had her spooked?

  Angel exploded, “We can’t leave! It’s only five days since he disappeared!”

  Julie laid her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Listen, Angel, I know what Aard means to you. He’s our friend too. But we have to leave. Now.”

  Daniel watched her in silent unease. There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice and body. Breaking up camp was not an activity he looked upon lightly. A lot of sweat and resources had gone into constructing these cabins, the garden and the fence around the compound. Both he and Julie had spent weeks finding, chopping down and hauling in the timber to build the houses. Daniel had spent many days further insulating the cabins by creating an additional wall and filling the gap with grass and leaves. Five years ago, with Aard’s help and his findings from an old abandoned town to the south, Daniel had even installed windows made of duraplast.

  Angel turned to her father in desperation, “Daddy, make her stop. This isn’t fair. We can’t abandon Aard...”

  Daniel threw a glance at Julie and found to his amazement that she remained unmoved by Angel’s reference to abandoning someone.

  Angel wailed, “He might be hurt out there!”

  “Or more likely he just left,” Julie responded.

  Daniel stared along with Angel at his wife. Those were cruel words, and Julie knew it. Her face wore a complicated mix of expressions that Daniel found hard to r
ead. “He’s a hermit, Angel,” Julie tried to reason with her daughter. “He just wandered into our lives six years ago and now he’s probably just wandered out. I know it’s tough on you, but hermits are like that “

  “No!” Angel jerked out of her mother’s hands. “He’d never do that. He’d never leave and not tell me.”

  Julie’s face, though it mirrored Angel’s pain, remained determined.

  Angel glared at her mother. “What if he comes back and we’re gone. He’s my only friend. You don’t care if I’m happy. I hate you! You can’t keep me trapped this way forever. One day I’ll be all grown up and I won’t need you anymore. And you won’t be able to do anything about it!” Then she stormed out of the camp.

  “Angel!” Julie ran her fingers through her chaotic hair and turned to Daniel with a desperate look.

  He shrugged. “She’ll get over it—eventually. Now,” he said, giving her a stern look, “tell me the real reason why we have to go.”

  5

  Daniel wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, set his mortar trowel down beside the unfinished cabin wall of their new campsite then rose to stretch. He watched Julie’s slender figure below him, as she negotiated the river cobbles with the ease of a dancer. She pirouetted from one rock to another over the churning water, sun-bleached hair bouncing behind her like a wild river. She resembled a wild prairie nymph in her buckskin shorts, faded blue shirt and buckskin jerkin.

  It drew out a sighing smile from him and reminded him of when they’d first met: two urchins facing each other, arms diving into a garbage can for the half-eaten sandwich some woman had dropped in moments ago. Meeting her savage eyes, set in a belligerent face of big protruding teeth and a shock of straw-coloured hair, he’d liked her instantly. They called a truce and shared the sandwich.