“No,” Diana (Grecia) said. “Why should I?”
“Of course,” Kroner repeated. “From your point of view, no reason. You’ve always been the most stubborn and independent-minded. No matter how much we strive for uniformity. Not that we mind, you understand—it’s just that the variations make the training more difficult to program. I suppose it will make you harder to predict in action, so it’s all for the best.”
“Haven’t told me what?” I demanded. I tried to picture some horrible secret, but nothing would come to mind.
“Diana Seven is not a name,” Kroner told me, “it’s a designation. Choosing it as her alias is the sort of direct thinking we’ve come to expect from Grecia.”
“It’s a comment,” Diana (Grecia) said.
“Grecia is number seven in an official government program known as Project Diana,” Kroner said. “The number is arbitrary.”
“So is the name,” Diana (Grecia) said. “You know how I was named? Listen, I’ll recite the names of the first seven girls, in order—that should give you the idea: Adena, Beth, Claudia, Debra, Erdra, Fidelia, Grecia. It goes on like that. I prefer Diana Seven, it’s more honest.”
“Diana Seven you are to me forever,” I told her. “I don’t understand, though. What sort of government project?”
“This is going to sound silly,” Kroner said, managing to look apologetic, “but I don’t think you have the need to know.”
“I might not have the—but I do indeed need to know very badly, and I can develop the official Need to Know in a very few minutes realtime.”
“I will tell everything,” Diana said, sitting down on a straight-back chair and crossing her shapely legs. “What do you push to get them to bring up drinks?”
“I’ll do it,” I said, picking up the housephone and dialing. “What would you like?”
“Coffee,” Diana said.
“Another profession,” Kroner said. “I guess you’re right—we’d better talk about it.”
“Something harder than coffee for you,” I said, and ordered a pot of coffee and a portable bar sent up.
“Grecia—”
“Call her Diana—she prefers it.”
Kroner shrugged. He was not very happy. “Diana is a GAM. Project Diana is one of a series of GAM projects that Future is funding.”
GAM = Genetically Altered Man. GAMs were in disfavor now, at least on Earth, as it was felt that no alteration of the zygote could make up for a happy home life, or some such illogic.
“I thought the Bureau of the Future was only involved in long-range planning of city growth and transportation and that sort of thing,” I said.
“And defense,” Kroner told me. “Diana is a defense project.”
That stopped me. I went into the bedroom to take off my tie and think of something clever to ask.
“What do you mean, ‘a defense project’?” I cleverly asked when I returned. The bar was ported in then, so I had to wait for my answer. The waiter tried hard to preserve his air of waiterly detachment and not stare at Kroner, and even harder not to smile.
Kroner glared at him and stood up, flexing his biceps under the skintight onesuit. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “What are you staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a Frog Prince before?”
The waiter merely gulped and fled the room. We all burst out laughing and I remembered that in my youth one of my closest friends had been a weightlifter. “You really should have dressed for the period,” I told Kroner.
He shrugged. “I was wearing a period overcoat,” he said, gesturing to a crumpled garment lying over a chair.
I fixed our various drinks and we sipped them and stared at each other. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the girls while they were on their travels,” Kroner said. “When Diana took off with you we got worried. Diana has a certain reputation among the staff as a trouble-maker and you are a prominent senator. The combination could be explosive.”
“How?” I asked.
“The projects are played down,” Kroner said. “For us, any press is bad. We’d be caught between two fires; those who are afraid of any GAM projects—the ‘The only good superman is a dead superman’ group—and those who would feel sorry for Diana and her sisters—poor little girls deprived of a home life and mother love and apple pie.”
“It might have been nice, you know, all that stuff,” Diana said, a surface anger in her voice covering some deeper emotion. “Why do people decide they have the right to do what’s good for other people?”
“What?” I asked, feeling ignorant and ignored.
“We didn’t exactly do it because it was good for you,” Kroner said sadly. “We did it because it was necessary for us. We never lied to you about that.”
“Great ethics,” Diana said in a low, clipped voice that had an undertone of controlled scream. “We screwed up your life from before you were born, but at least we didn’t lie to you—and that makes it all all right.” She turned to me. “Did you know I’m a mule?” she demanded.
“What?”
“A mule. Or perhaps a hinny. Except instead of a cross between a jackass and a mare, I’m a cross between a human gamete and a micro-manipulator. Sterile.”
“You mean you’re—”
“No pills, no inserts, no children—no chance. Just me. Dead end. Supermule.”
I went over to hold her, to show I understood, but she drew away. Mulelike, I couldn’t help thinking, in her anger. “I’m on your side, you know,” I said to her. She nodded, but stayed encased in herself.
I asked Kroner, “In what way is this girl a weapon?”
“Not a weapon,” Kroner said. “More like a soldier.”
“A hunting dog,” Diana said. Well, it was a better self-image than a mule.
Kroner nodded. “In a way. Superfast reflexes, for one thing. One of the reasons she’s small: information travels to the brain faster. Nerves react and transmit faster. Eyes see farther into the infrared and ultraviolet. Raw strength is of little use today. You know how old she is?”
I didn’t. “I’m not good at guessing age,” I said.
“Twelve,” Kroner said.
There was, I believe, a long pause then. “Do you mind?” Diana asked softly.
“I am surprised,” I said.
“The tendency in naturally evolved high intelligence is for longer childhoods, not shorter,” Kroner said. “You must experience more, cogitate more, and have more time to experiment—play—to develop a really high intelligence potential. But it is possible to mature a high intelligence very quickly in an extremely enriched environment. Twelve years from birth to adult is about the best we can manage. The body takes that long to grow and mature anyway, if we want a comparatively normal body.”
“Diana is an adult,” I said. “No matter how many times, or how few, the Earth has circled the sun since her birth.”
Kroner nodded. “Diana is a highly capable adult, able to handle herself well in almost any situation.”
“I’ll not argue that,” I said. “She dispatched three ruffians who attacked us and did so with unseemly ease.”
“Ah!” Kroner said. “We thought that was she. Very good, Diana. Of course, that’s what she’s been trained and bred for, so it’s fitting that she did.”
“Trained for close combat?” I asked. “What sort of war are you expecting?”
“Not that,” Kroner explained. “For you, as for most of the rest of humanity, killing any sentient being—and many lower animals—would be murder. You’d have to steel yourself and be highly motivated to perform the act. For Diana, killing anything that isn’t human—or even humans who are clearly ‘enemy’—is equivalent to hunting. And, like, a good hunting dog, she enjoys it. Isn’t that so, Diana?”
She nodded. “I can’t see anything wrong with killing an enemy. And the fact that I know this is genetics and conditioning doesn’t matter—all attitudes anyone has are a result of genetics and conditioning. If you gentlemen will excuse me, it’s been a long da
y and I think I’ll go to bed.”
Kroner and I spoke privately for a short while after Diana retired. I suspect Diana listened at the door, as she was awake when I went to bed, but if so I’m glad of it.
“Does this mean I have to worry about Diana’s getting angry at me and breaking my neck?” I asked Kroner, when she had left.
“Not at all,” he said. “If anything, the opposite. She may tend to overprotect you. To kill a human being who is not an enemy would, in any case, be murder, and she is incapable of murder.”
“How does she determine an enemy?”
“I think, at the moment, she’ll take your word for it. She appears to be fixated on you. You may call it love, if you like, but we prefer the scientific term.”
“I appear to be fixated on her,” I said. “Whatever you call it.”
“That’s fine. We approve. As long as you aren’t planning to use her—or make a political issue or anything of that sort—we’re on your side.”
“What is she doing here anyway? Is school out? Vacation?”
Kroner fixed himself another drink. “No,” he said. “This is part of her training. Mixing with humanity to learn more fully what it is she may be fighting for. Two years of this—going and doing more or less where and what she wants—then she’ll be ready for, let’s call it graduate school.”
“More fixating?”
“That’s right. Fixating on man. Those in charge of this project seem a bit afraid of their creation.”
“Historical precedent,” I said. “Or, at least, literary.”
“Yes,” Kroner said. “Take care of Diana. Enjoy her. Love her. She needs more love than the other girls.”
“You mean she fixates more strongly?” I asked.
Kroner smiled. “As of now,” he said, “I’m on vacation. Bye.” He picked up his coat and left.
I went in to sleep with Diana and she held me tight for a long while. I think she would have cried if she had known how. I held her, but it’s hard to comfort someone who cannot cry.
O O O
Back in realtime—away from Earth and Anno Domini—I used my status to find out about the Project. Diana opted to stay with me. We fixated well together. It was difficult, even for me, to open the private record of Project Diana. It was the most recent in a line of such projects dating back to shortly after the Mabden Annihilation. I immersed myself in it and read motive, intent, achievement, method, fear and design in the record crystals.
Earth is afraid of its heroes. Always has been.
Diana is sterile by design. Female by convenience—easier to control without the Y chromosome. Sterile by design. Safer. Can’t breed a super-race behind our backs.
Diana’s cells won’t regenerate. Our long life depends upon regeneration—actually replication—of certain cells. Diana’s—let us call it template—is inaccessible to our techniques. Also by design. Safer thus. Can’t make long-range plans behind our backs. She will also age fast and be old by forty—probably dead by fifty.
I went home that evening and cried myself to sleep. Diana held me, but the crying frightened her and she couldn’t help because I wouldn’t tell her why, and it’s hard to comfort someone unless you know why he’s crying.
I have two years with her before she has to go off to prepare for the war we may never have. She wants to go. They want her for twenty-five years, she says, and she owes them that.
We’re planning what we will do when she returns. There are so many things she wants to do and see in this vast galaxy. I promised to show them all to her.
I hardly cry at all any more, even late at night.
***
Sylvia Ascending
By Sandra McDonald
1.
Last night I slept poorly, lost in dreams of green seawater swirling around my ankles, my white flesh sickly pale; the knobs of my bones stuck out obscenely. The smell of salt was so strong that I woke with my nose wrinkled against my cold pillow. In a long-ago life I was a gray-skinned merwoman who swam with her lovers in dark currents. Red seaweed trailed from our fingers as we darted around sharp rocks. Whales called to us with their mournful, thunderous voices. In this life I’m trapped on a planet without waves or currents, tides or whirlpools. Mars is an ugly desert of rust and dust that wears at my soul. When I tell people my dreams, I’m assured that they’re nothing but fanciful imaginings based on the holomovies played to all Hub 3 children in Nursery, but no one dreams as vividly as I do. Especially now with Decision Day looming like a serrated knife over the soft belly of a defenseless clam. The others have all made their choices while I drown in indecision.
2.
Last night I went with John to a party in Hub 4. On the way we strolled under a dome stained midnight blue, with distant white lights poorly mimicking the constellations. John’s long brown hair was swept back neatly, his nose long and strong, his shoes polished to a mirror-like shine. I was the demure virgin princess in my white dress and crocheted white sweater. When his smooth hand found mine, I felt electrified. A girl is not a girl until a boy touches her and makes her real. As we passed, young trees stirred in the artificial breeze along the promenade; court attendants paying homage to John’s royalty. But his father won’t be deputy commander of the colony forever. Where does a prince of Mars go when the golden throne passes? To earth, to earth. A path denied to those of us without money or political connections.
His hands when we danced were hot on the small of my back. We drank sour wine and in a dark corner he kissed me as if he wanted to swallow me whole. He says that if we marry I can come to earth with him. We will walk barefoot through jungles and swim down icy rivers and do all the things that all the Martian-born long for. The great inland museums are all shrines now, guarded by robots who roll tourists through sealed stacks of books. We will escape our mechanical guide, scale the shelves with picks and ropes, tear open brittle pages with our oily hands and inhale the old words like atoms of oxygen. We will row a boat over Greenwich, where learned men once declared the Prime Meridian, and drop wreaths over the watery graves of rocket launch pads off the diminished coast of Florida.
He looked hurt when I told him he said those things only so I’d agree to make out with him. Men on Mars are all alike. They will say and do anything for the prize. The male animal has changed very little in his leap across the void. They crave what they can’t have, flatter and persuade with sweet lies, claim their brief moment of primal ecstasy and then move on.
On Earth it must be even worse, because there’s so many billions of them, all the fishermen and soldiers and factory workers forced away from the fertile coasts after the rape of Mother Earth, and they are hungry to hold women, to fondle them, to punish them for their own transgressions.
It doesn’t matter if John truly wants to sweep me up and carry me over a threshold; he is not the other half of my soul. He never presses his nose to portholes to study the sky. He cares nothing for the mystery of gravity, which swings stars around each other like partners on the dance floor. If I succumb to marriage it would be to someone like Marquez, who is second in astronomy class only to me. Once we argued so long and passionately about white holes that the pod went home and left us in a yellow pool of light in the otherwise dark classroom. He wants be a brilliant engineer. He dreams of bigger and better hubs across the face of Mars, mega-Hubs of domes and gravity traps. His decision is made.
If I could, I would be the anti-Marquez. I would sweep my arms across the landscape, dredge up ancient incantations from the time when my kind wielded primal power, and turn Mars back to ocean and mountains under the protection of a blue atmosphere. But there is no neat little checkbox and career path for Miracle Worker. Only terraformers can ever bring the oceans back to Mars, and that will be long after I’ve gone to ash and char in the crematorium.
3.
Today Dr. Hardy asked to see me after pod. He is tall and lanky and always looks like he is thinking deep thoughts. He told me that I have the highest intelligence of any
one in my cohort, which I knew but warmed me inside anyway. The human ego inflates so easily under flattery. He believes I should decide on astrophysics for my career track. Perhaps to be a researcher, or even a teacher. I told him that my passion is for literature and nature. If only I could sit in a forest all day long, content with sunshine and strawberries and piles of books. He urged me to consider more viable options. If I don’t choose for myself, I’ll be assigned to support services and demoted down to Hub 2. That’s what happened to Mother when Father died. Or worse, I could be sent to agro services in Hub 1, where workers toil in low gravity until their bodies succumb to age and frailty.
When I left his office my hands were trembling with rage at the unfairness of this age and this planet. Freedom is an illusion when you depend on the bureaucracy for the very air you breathe. We drink clean water only because the corporation pipes it to us. We have shelter from radiation only because the corporation protects us. Those of us in Hubs 3 and 4 have the corporation to thank for the dark matter traps that keep our feet rooted to the decks. I hate the corporation so thoroughly that if I could, I would stab it through its heart with a silver dagger.
4.
Tonight, Evan took me to the Hub 3 gardens. His kisses are too clumsy and he sweats heavily all the time but he has a sweetness that John lacks, like strawberries might taste if they were warmed by the sun. He has chosen Administration. He envisions a long, safe future in a cubicle, manipulating numbers and charts and bureaucracy. I know he will marry some sweet girl like Elizabeth, with her round face and heavy breasts and cheerful nature. They’ll be happy until they aren’t, and then they’ll part bitterly and blame each other to all their friends; alliances will shift, connections break, affections dissolve into the static.
He says I should choose Administration like he has. I told him it would be a slow, painful death by a thousand paper cuts, even though no one uses paper anymore. He kissed me more and said that I am “deliciously unique” but that means nothing. The stars above each spin in their own unique orbits and glow with their own unique fires, but are as common as grains of sand on the dry Martian shores.
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