Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  She grinned back. “Well, what are we waiting for, then?”

  ***

  “Just stay right behind me,” Manfred whispered over his shoulder as Angel followed him quietly through the long corridors of the Med-Center. “I know this place like the back of my hand.”

  “Yeah, but how well do you know the back of your hand,” she challenged.

  “Smart aleck,” he said, not looking back this time.

  He led her along a route she’d never taken before, down several small hallways and stairways until she felt sure they were lost. She was just wondering why they hadn’t reached a security door yet or seen a guard, when Proteus’s insect voices spiked her danger sense.

  “Someone’s coming!” she hissed.

  “I know!” he snarled back. “Quick,” he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a side corridor then pelted to the end of it.

  “It’s a dead end!” she heard her voice rasp in dismay.

  “With a vent,” he said, stopping under a head-height screen on the wall. He reached up and pulled hard, dislodging the ventilation screen.

  “That came loose easy,” she said, frowning.

  “That’s ‘cause I use it all the time. This is my escape route.” He hauled himself up and reached back to pull her up. “Come on!” He glanced nervously past her to the end of the hall. The person they’d both sensed must be close by now. She scrambled up and he gruffly pulled her inside the shaft, then planted his hands on her behind and pushed her past him, drawing out a flare of embarrassment from her despite the situation. He quickly and deftly replaced the vent screen in its place.

  She looked back at his smirking face and felt her own lips curl into a sloping smile. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Almost as much as you,” he whispered. “Let’s go. This’ll get us past all the security checks but it’s a bit cramped.”

  “Cramped is fine,” she said, managing a broad smile as she thought of what Gaia was going to look like when she discovered that Angel was no longer there.

  30

  Julie had been pacing the luxurious suite like a panther in a cage. She’d roamed from the window to the open door to her large bedroom, to the plush couch and chairs to the large wooden desk with vee-com, to the full-length mirror and holo art and back to the window. She finally stopped and with effort stood still in the centre of the living room. She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths, focusing her mind inward. She opened her eyes and pushed out one steady, relaxed, pressure-relieving breath. As she started to draw in her next breath, she began the fluid movements to a meditative Tai Chi pattern. She performed her graceful slow-motion dance, limbs coiling and releasing to an inner rhythm, seeking that place inside her that was calm and at peace.

  As her body performed the stylized postures of the dragon, the tiger, and the crane, Julie found her mind drifting back to the heath where she’d practiced Tai Chi with Angel. Using the movements that Aard had taught them, mother and daughter had performed the graceful dance in unison each and every morning. They’d stepped through the eighty-three postures in complete synchronization: mind and body united with nature and the universe; mother and daughter linked in spirit and soul.

  When she completed her routine in her suite, Julie found that she’d only gained a momentary reprieve from the morose melancholy embracing her soul. She realized now that no amount of meditation could erase the memory of what she’d done. She finished her last posture, held it one last moment, then released the energy, bowed her head to the plush carpet and sighed.

  She’d been here for several hours. A Pol had brought her a meal, otherwise she’d been left alone with her doubts and regrets. What was in store for her now that she’d done the ‘wonderful deed’ of shutting down the core and killing SAM? Good Earth, how stupid she’d been to believe them, especially Frank, she thought. The mayor no doubt had planned for this event, setting up a contingent A.I.-human network to ensure that the city climbed to a new paradigm and did not suffer a standstill from the shutdown. Life in Icaria-5 continued while Julie Crane once again served as the public scapegoat, this time for disrupting the city’s public services.

  Julie dropped into a plush, overstuffed chair and put her head in her hands. She’d wanted to believe Frank so badly; and so she had. But in retrospect, the logic of what he said and what she knew of his character all pointed in the opposite direction. No, she couldn’t blame Frank—she had only herself to blame. Once again, she’d fooled herself.

  Julie rose and wandered to the window that gave her a limited view of the heath and pressed her face against the duraplast. The sun had just set, casting a warm tangerine glow over the darkening horizon and carrying her imagination back to her family. In her mind’s eye she saw them turn and run toward her. Angel reached her first, flying up into her arms and hugging her around the neck. Then Daniel flung his arms around them both. She basked in the warmth of the imagined moment but was snapped back to reality by the cold window on her skin. The loss of her family tore open a rift in her gut and the ache inside her flooded through her in a convulsion of weeping.

  The moment of self-pity passed quickly and Julie fiercely choked the tears back and fisted the moisture out of her eyes. She refused to fall apart and succumb to grief over first SAM’s needless death and now the distinct possibility that her mission to come here to free her family from harassment was not only a dismal failure, but had been orchestrated by that miserable virus all along!

  Unless she did something to stop them, she was doomed to remain trapped here, a servant to the vagaries of the Head Pol and Gaia and possibly Proteus. If she didn’t cooperate, they might even haul Angel to Icaria-5 to take her place. She had to stop them all of them, including Proteus. And she had to find Victor Burke. He was the key to unlocking the door to the insanity Icaria-5 had become. She felt sure that Burke’s absence had everything to do with the mess Icaria and she was in right now. Gaia had taken over and her insanity was sending Icaria-5 to Hell in a handbasket.

  Finding Burke meant first escaping from this room and the Pol-Station and that was no small challenge in itself. Once she got out, she’d still have to find Burke in the huge city without drawing attention to herself and getting caught, somehow. She was getting ahead of herself! “One step at a time”, she whispered. First she had to get out of here.

  She’d had a lot of time to think of escape, yet all she’d come up with was a tenuous plan at best. Her initial survey had revealed two hidden cameras in this main living area, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. The main door likely led to a monitored hallway—she hadn’t heard any stirrings of a guard outside. Each room had a window with no balcony and no ledge. Basically there was nothing between her and thirty stories of free-fall to the ground if she went that way.

  Time was running out and since there was no time like the present, she kicked her hair-brained plan into gear and began her daily floor exercises. Aware that she was no doubt entertaining whoever was monitoring the camera, Julie worked up a good sweat with stretches, push-ups, squats and anything else she could add into the mix to get warmed up for what lay ahead. She pushed herself harder and harder, her heart pumping both with the exercise and with determination. For half an hour she kept it up, finally cooling down and bringing the workout to an end. She strode into the bedroom, feeling the flush of her body. She pulled out some new clothes from the dresser then stripped the bed, rolling the bedding into a pile, obviously meant for the laundry chute in the bathroom. She tossed the clean set of clothes on the bed, ready for her to change into later, then sauntered to the bathroom, where she carelessly dumped the pile on the floor by the chute. While she undressed, she avoided looking up at the poorly hidden camera, but imagined someone leering at the other end.

  Julie stepped into the shower and turned the water as hot as possible. In short order, hot steam filled the room and, she hoped, fogged the lens of the
camera. Now to work, she thought, breaking into an old English ballad she’d learned from her mother and used to sing to Angel when she was a baby: “One morning, one morning, one morning in May...I spied a young couple, a making up hay...” She dearly hoped that the singing drowned out any sounds she was about to make. “...For one was a fair maid and her beauty shone clear...and the other was a soldier, a bold grenadier...”

  Under cover of the steam, she quickly redressed in her sweaty workout clothes, swiftly tied the bed sheets together into a makeshift rope then fastened one end to the toilet by the window. She trembled with the excitement, fear and the razor-sharp edge of adrenaline coursing through her system. “Good morning, good morning, good morning said he...Oh where are you going, my pretty lady...” Trying to keep her singing voice steady, Julie picked up the heavy toilet lid and slammed it into the window. “I’m a going a walking by the clear crystal stream, to see cool waters gliding and nightingale sing...” The lid bounced off the durable plastic. Damn! She tried again and then a third time before the window finally shattered with a quick, loud thud and crash that made her flinch.

  “Oh, I thought I’d drop that one day!” she exclaimed for the surveillance team, knowing full well they’d send someone down pronto. She probably had a minute or two, no more. “Oh soldier, oh soldier, will you marry me...Oh no, my dear lady, that never can be...” Knowing the steam would dissipate quickly and reveal her escape, Julie brushed the duraplast shards off the lower sill of the window with a towel. “...for I’ve got a wife at home in my own country...” She threw out the bed sheets and climbed up on the sill, squeezing through the small window. “Two wives and the army, too many for me...” She felt the blast of cool air and the thrill of being a short step and a long fall away from death.

  Grabbing hold of her sheet rope, she rappelled down without giving herself the luxury of either looking down or thinking about where she was. The cool wind blew the sheet hanging below her and whipped her hair across her face as she lowered herself down. Her muscles were alive with activity like they hadn’t been since that day on the cliff face so long ago when she had discovered Aard’s hidey-hole.

  She finally hazarded a look below her and inhaled sharply. Amidst the alarm of her precarious position, she felt a thrill of amazement for the beauty three hundred feet below her. The heath was in full bloom a mosaic of colours blended like a pointillist painting brought to life by the brushstrokes of Mother Earth in a warming sun. A gust of wind snapped at her and her reverie vanished. She swallowed hard, then she set her fears aside and focused on her task.

  Braced against the wall with her feet and hanging on to her makeshift line, Julie saw a window just below her on the next floor. Even though she had no time to be picky she couldn’t go for that one. It was a bathroom window, just like the one she hung from, and definitely much too small to break from the outside. The window beside it was a lot larger.

  Julie took a deep breath, and mentally prepared herself. She’d done a similar maneuver dozens of times with Aard, but with rope, gloves and a safety harness, and not with the hope of smashing through a duraplast window. It was quite possible that the force of her weight and momentum still wouldn’t break the window and she was afraid it might take her a few attempts, just as it had with the bathroom window. Her biggest worry was that she wouldn’t get the time to try more than once because her ‘clever’ maneuver could simply rip the bed sheets and she’d unceremoniously plummet thirty stories or so to her death.

  So be it, she decided with a grimace and kicked off the wall at an angle and swung down in an arc toward the larger window. Her feet met resistance for a fraction of a second as the window flexed inward. Then there was a crack like a gunshot and the large window smashed through and she tumbled inside what she hoped was another suite. Scratched and bruised, Julie scrambled up from the floor and came face to face with a little man with close-cropped burgundy hair. He stifled a shriek. His startled pale eyes blinked rapidly in shock, and something else she could have sworn was recognition.

  ***

  It was time to finally get out of this place, Victor thought for the hundredth time as he watched the glow of sunset paint the heath below in stunning, rich tones of ochre and russet highlighted with the splashes of yellow, red, and purple. This time he was going to do it, he promised himself. This time he’d go through with his egress. Pivoting on his heel he decided to try the door first. To his amazement, he found that it wasn’t locked and opened without resistance. A quick peek into the empty hallway revealed that a guard was no longer posted. This was too much!

  So, Gaia hadn’t even given him the benefit of that much motivation. Perhaps he’d earned her disrespect, though. Vee knows he hadn’t ever done anything to earn otherwise, he thought grimly. He’d been her willing lackey from the moment she’d ensnared him in his own trap many years ago. Even his final insubordination had been underhanded—he’d never faced her directly and openly defied her. Well, he thought as panic surged up to choke him, again, all that was going to change right now! He went back into the dusk-darkened suite to retrieve his droid, but halted in mid-stride. Something large and fast was swinging down toward his window, partially blocking his view of the blood-red sky.

  Before he could react, the duraplast shattered and a body tumbled into the room. Silhouetted against the sunset, a lithe, slender woman gracefully picked herself up out of the wreckage, dusted herself off with a sense of urgency and regarded him with a mix of fear and challenge. She took a step forward into the light cast by the toppled table lamp and he recognized the feral green eyes.

  It was her!

  Instinctively he recoiled with a cry and stepped back, fidgeting with his collar. Her face was flush, her disheveled hair sparkled with duraplast fragments, and her standard Com-Centre-issue clothes were sweaty and rumpled. But to him, she was impeccably and terrifyingly beautiful.

  A glimmer of recognition crossed her face and she tipped her head slightly as if trying to recall an elusive memory. But the look disappeared as she attended to business. Quickly ensuring that no one else was in the room, she said to him, “Sorry, I’m just passing through. I won’t hurt you. Just stay out of my way, please.”

  “You’re...Julie Crane,” he stammered, following her.

  She turned back to him and regarded him carefully with narrowed eyes, visibly annoyed that he was still there. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve been told about me or what you’re doing here,” she said in a cool voice, sizing him up and down, possibly checking for weapons, “.…ut you don’t look like a Pol, so, I’m not your business. Understand?”

  “Maybe...” He swallowed nervously and took in a shallow breath, his eyes still downcast. “Maybe I can help you.”

  She came close to sneering but cut herself off and said sharply, “I don’t think so.” She’d obviously dismissed him as insignificant, like so many others before her. “I’m looking for someone.” She headed for the door again.

  “I know lots of people. Who are you looking for?”

  Hand on the door handle, she turned her head and gave him an appraising look, one eyebrow raised. It was obvious she didn’t believe him. After a brief pause she made a decision, perhaps strictly out of politeness and said, “Victor Burke.”

  He almost laughed with surprise. Then he took a deep breath, stood up straight and saw that she noticed the transformation. “I’m Victor Burke,” he said with a confident smile, meeting her eyes for the first time.

  Her eyes widened, then quickly narrowed with suspicion and disbelief. It was obvious she was wondering how on earth such a meek weakling could command the power of an entire city? Then her face suddenly relaxed and she broke into a broad smile that both thrilled and frightened him at the same time. “I met you once before, at a party,” she said.

  She’d remembered! Victor nodded. “Yes. I was talking with Gaia. I was the mayor of Icaria-5 then.” He grimaced and drew in a breath.
“She’s mayor now.”

  She firmed her lips and nodded. “I see. Are they holding you here against your will, like me?”

  “Yes, except—”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish because the door swung open. Julie had already reacted, as if she’d guessed what was going to happen. As it opened, she lunged forward from behind the door and pulled the man toward her with a jerk to meet her raised knee. He doubled over with a gasp and she clubbed him with both fists. He toppled to the floor and moaned. Victor recognized him as Greg Tyers. “Come on,” Julie said over her shoulder and shot out the door.

  She met a wall of Pols. Julie tried to plow through them but they seized her as she lashed and kicked out. Tyers scrambled to his feet and wrenched her arm to swivel her around to face him. Then he struck her hard on the face. She cried out and slumped in her captor’s arms.

  “I told you not to hurt her!” a voice barked from the hallway. The Head Pol stepped forward through the gap the Pols made for him and regarded Julie for a moment. Unconscious, her head had lolled forward and her hair spilled over her face. With a frown he grabbed her hair to lift her head up. “You knocked her out, Tyers!” Langor released her hair and Julie’s head dropped down again. He looked into the suite and saw the broken window and the rope of bed sheets snagged on the remains of the duraplastic window and fluttering in the wind blowing through the opening.

  “Certainly a gutsy piece, isn’t she?” He turned to face Victor with a look of open contempt. “Not like you, eh? No, you’d rather watch.” He turned toward the door. “Seems you have a broken window. We’ll have to get you a better room one with a lock and no window this time, so there are no more interruptions from flying women.” Then he laughed a self-satisfied chuckle that made Victor cringe.

  31

  “Our prize,” the man called Jake growled as he stormed into the room. “She’s there.” Like Washington, Jake’s head was shaven and his roughly chiseled face looked like a half-finished sculpture. His nose was practically flat as though he’d run into a moving tube-jet at full speed. “The Dick says she was a special guest of the Head Pol. He was entertaining her in his office-residence in the freaking Pol Station, but they’ve just moved her to the twentieth floor.”