RAINCLOUD’S MOTHER DID NOT VISIT, BUT HER FATHER wrote a letter all about their plans for the Day of the Child, the great celebration of springtime. The men were sewing new clothes, the children were practicing for the great procession up the mountain, and Raincloud’s firstborn nieces were learning the Worldbeginning. Hawktalon, too, had to learn the Worldbeginning, on top of her correspondence lessons; that plus her hours in the shon kept her well out of mischief.
“Any word about Falcon Soaring?” asked Blackbear.
“No,” said Raincloud without looking up.
Blackbear took a deep breath and sighed. It was Her will, as in so many things, he told himself. “It must be hard for her,” he murmured. “Especially so close to Child’s Day.” Watching Raincloud, with her third one growing larger every day, he felt almost guilty at their happiness.
“All children belong to the Dark One,” said Raincloud. “That’s what Mother would say.”
Silence fell between them.
“I still wish they’d give the Founders City clinic a chance,” Blackbear could not help adding. “I know, there is honor in suffering, but not when it’s pointless.”
“Yes,” Raincloud said wearily. “But you know what they think of us and our ‘city’ notions. If only I could go home to talk with them.”
Blackbear shook his head. “The fare would wipe us out.”
“I’ll talk again with Mother—after the Day of the Child. She’ll be too busy with preparations just now.”
The holiday festivities, which Blackbear would miss for the first time in his life. Singing out under open skies…children tumbling in the grass…craters smoldering in the distance. More than ever he longed for home.
EXCITEMENT PERVADED TULLE’S LABORATORY AS THEY debated Blackbear’s idea. What would it take to process an entire human genome, all three billion base pairs? How many microscopic nanoservos would they need to undo the longevity modifications—the methyl, acetyl, and glucosamine side chains? Could the longevity treatment be reapplied successfully, after meiosis and fertilization? Would this means of “conception” ever prove practical?
The lab group met at the butterfly garden, while Tulle’s capuchin scampered beneath the table, chasing scraps of synthetic delicacies before the floor servos sucked them up. Onyx reviewed the process of chromosome synthesis. “The chromosomes will be removed from the nucleus, and nanoservos will read the nucleotide bases one by one, using microscopic laser beams. At the appropriate base sequences, enzymes will remove or add the chemical modifications.”
Pirin remained skeptical. “The longevity treatment includes actual mutations—changes in the sequence of bases, even addition of extra genes. Your treatment won’t affect these changes. The chromosomes still won’t undergo meiosis.”
“I disagree,” said Tulle. “All the literature shows that the modifications, not the mutations, are the barrier to meiosis. Now, the laser selection,” she asked Onyx, “how rapid is it?”
“One thousand nucleotides per second,” said Onyx. “At that speed, the error rate is less than one in a million.”
“That’s much too high,” objected Pirin. “It would mean thousands of mutations.”
“That’s prior to editing,” Onyx explained.
Tulle raised her hand. “Editing—that’s where we lose time. I’ll bet the accuracy of the laser selection could be improved in the first place, by at least a factor of ten. If we dangle enough credits in front of the Valan manufacturers, they’ll get the errors down.”
Draeg shrugged. “How accurate does it have to be? We’re all walking around with a bunch of mutations, after all.”
“You are,” Pirin corrected. “Elysians are conceived only from a defect-free pool of chromosomes.”
Rising from the table, Draeg stared down at the Elysian student. “Where do humans come from, if not a collection of mutants? We’re all just a bunch of mutant apes, remember?” He shrieked and pounded his chest, in a fair imitation of one of the gorillas in Tulle’s park.
Onyx slapped his arm, struggling to keep a straight face. “Mutant tree shrews, if you go back far enough. Now keep quiet and let me finish my report!”
While Onyx continued, Blackbear’s thoughts wandered. Here he was, planning to synthesize immortal embryos, while Raincloud’s own cousin in Tumbling Rock went without basic treatment for infertility. Instead, the High Priestess called for “donation” of a child. But why could not the clan swallow their suspicions and send Falcon Soaring to the clinic he knew so well?
The thought made him uneasy. Throughout his years of medical training in Founders City, he had managed to evade the conflicts between the modern world and his home traditions. Blackbear took pride in his mental organization; he put everything into compartments. This was for family, that for outsiders. In the city, he used the latest equipment; in Tumbling Rock, he used the best he had, and the rest was up to the Dark One.
Yet somehow, like the migratory germ cells, he had found himself heading out on a fantastic journey in search of immortality. A search in vain; he should have known it. What treatments, if they worked out, would ever come within reach of his own people? How could he have gone so far astray?
Immortality…Elysians would not call themselves immortal; they dreaded the term. Why?
Tulle was eyeing him oddly. Blackbear straightened his shoulders and looked down at the tray of lunch cakes, salmon and piñon nut flavor with a trace of lemon, shaped like starfishes. Elysians avoided wearing out their teeth, he realized. He muttered, “I’m not feeling well.”
“You’ve been working too hard,” Tulle assured him. “Foreigners always do. Go take the little one for a walk.”
Feeling guilty nonetheless, Blackbear excused himself and went to fetch Sunflower from the toybox. “Time for a walk, Sunny.”
“Why?” This was the boy’s current response to any statement.
“Because it’s a lovely day out.” A ridiculous answer, since Blackbear had no idea whether it rained or shined. How he longed for the hazy Bronze Skyan sunlight, and the wind that keened across the mountainside.
“Why?” Sunflower continued to watch the birdcage full of tweeting “birds.”
“Come on, we’ll get ice cream.”
That did it. The boy clambered up out of the cubicle, onto the ledge of the window. Before his father could reach him, he stood himself up, on tiptoe as usual. Then he lost his balance and fell off the ledge headlong.
As Blackbear picked him up, blood streamed from his nose all over his shirt. Blackbear shook his head; it was the second time that week. A servo medic appeared as usual, extending a little spongelike probe that stopped the blood like magic. Sunflower barely whimpered as the probe sucked up the blood out of his shirt and off Blackbear’s hand.
“That does it, Sunflower,” Blackbear announced as the servo medic withdrew. “You’ve got to stop that toe-walking and learn to walk properly.”
“Walk properly,” Sunflower repeated cheerfully. He watched his father’s example, then he looked down at his own feet. He took one flat step, then another.
The boy looked up at Blackbear. “That’s not walking. That’s marching. Why does everybody march, Daddy?”
Vanquished again, Blackbear swung the child up. He always felt better once he had Sunflower on his back, legs hugging his hips. There was something about the child’s toe-walking enthusiasm for life that buoyed his spirits.
Once Sunflower had his ice cream, Blackbear set out from the laboratory, joining the throng of silken trains in the street. Although Raincloud’s L’liite connection had brought a fine gift train, Blackbear, like Draeg, still refused to wear it.
With no destination in mind, he found himself turning in at the nearest public holostage to see who might be around for “visiting.” Perhaps Alin; the thought of that unperturbable logen always brought a good feeling. Alin was learning rei-gi exceptionally fast, even faster than Draeg. Blackbear called his name at the holostage.
“The citizen is unav
ailable for viewing at this time,” said the holostage. “Will you leave a message?”
“No thanks.” Alin was probably practicing at that moment—what else would he need “privacy” for, Blackbear thought with a smile. “Try Kal Anaeashon,” he found himself saying.
For Kal, as a teacher, “work” looked much the same as “visiting”; in either case, he was bound to have a cluster of students about him. To Blackbear’s surprise, however, this time Kal appeared alone in a butterfly garden. In white as usual, he sat at the outer edge of a mooncurved bench, as if turning his back to the world. He read out of a thick volume, his head inclined slightly toward the page. As Blackbear watched, he turned a page, and a breath of air stirred the dead leaf at his shoulder.
Sunflower bounced on Blackbear’s shoulders. “Let’s go, Daddy.”
Blackbear hesitated, wondering whether the logen wished to be alone. It could hardly hurt to stop by.
“Third Octant, Liron Street; Garden of Anaeans,” the holostage informed him. Off he went through the now familiar channels of the transit reticulum, vesicles pinching in and out.
The garden of anaeans had an unusual feel to it. Heliconians and swallowtails were gaudy creatures that flashed their colors across the trees, but anaeans looked like bits of leaf litter. Trees full of them rather resembled the fall foliage of Blackbear’s home world; it saddened him, to think of missing the fall this year.
He found Kal sitting alone, just as the holostage had shown. Swinging Sunflower down, he walked over and bowed slightly. “Greetings, Kal Anaeashon. What are you reading today?”
But Kal did not answer. He looked up, as if deep in thought. Then he snapped shut his book and got up from the bench, to walk off slowly down the path, toward the pavilion where the trainsweeps waited.
Astonished, Blackbear stared after him. The logen might not wish to be disturbed, but why such rudeness in public? He went after Kal quickly and caught his arm, forgetting that Elysians did not appreciate such contact. “What’s going on? You said I should look you up again. I’m sorry you’re busy, but—is that any way to treat a man?”
Kal turned his head slightly. “You’re right, I’m busy. My office hours are tomorrow.”
Blackbear eyed him suspiciously. Kal’s face was expressive, perhaps more so than he himself realized. His features had the frozen ugly look that Raincloud sometimes wore when something too dishonorable to mention displeased her. “Why are you angry?”
Kal turned to him, his eyes wide and black, a striking contrast to his white hair. “I’m not angry,” he said as if surprised. He set the book down upon another mooncurved bench. “Let’s walk. Have you been here before? Have you seen the anaean caterpillars? They’re covered remarkably with fine white stalks. Look, you can barely tell one end from another.”
Guardedly Blackbear eyed the white-bristled black caterpillars, pulling Sunflower back lest he get too interested.
“You study those, in your laboratory, don’t you?” Kal said.
“What? No, not our lab. Only humans.”
“What’s that caterpillar creature, then,” Kal asked, “the one in the holomicrogram, above the entrance hall?”
“Oh that’s Caenorhabditis, the nematode,” Blackbear remembered. “The first species in which a longevity-infertility gene was discovered. A nematode is a far simpler organism than a caterpillar.”
“Yes, I see. They are quite different.”
Onyx’s remark came to mind, and he smiled. “If you go back far enough, they’re not all that different. Human, worm, or caterpillar, we’re all ‘eukaryotes’—cells with a nucleus. And we all share descent from microbes.”
“Microbes.” Kal laughed. “Our tribal ancestors would trace their lineage to an animal founder, a bear perhaps, or a lion. Yet even they were never so bold as you scientists.” Kal pulled at a branch and gazed intently at a caterpillar that stretched its head, or its tail, to grasp the next leaf. “I hear the Guard has assigned your mate to the World Gathering.”
So that was what irked him. “She’s translating for their delegates,” Blackbear explained. “It’s nothing to do with my work.”
“That is what Verid would say. But the Guard tacitly supports your work. Everything in Elysium works on multiple levels.”
Blackbear shifted his feet, impatient with second-guessing. “Well it wasn’t my idea, so you needn’t get angry at me.”
“You’re right; I’m sorry. Sit down a minute.” They sat on a bench beneath a sweeping branch covered with leafwings. Blackbear blinked as one flitted just past his eyes. “Those microbes,” Kal added, “our ancestral ones; were they by any chance rock-eating microbes?”
An odd question. “They must have been,” Blackbear said, struggling to recall his microbiology from medical school. “With no organic food available, the first microbes metabolized minerals.”
“Even uranium?”
“Some still do,” he recalled suddenly. “Uranium mines are cleaned up using bacteria that reduce uranium ion to an insoluble form.”
“So it’s true. I’ve always wondered,” Kal observed cryptically. “And how is your family?”
“Fine. Hawktalon loves the shon. Sunflower falls and picks himself up again.”
“And soon you’ll have another child. A child growing out of one’s own body; how extraordinary.”
It was extraordinary, he thought, even though it happened every day. Blackbear himself had caught his share of slippery wrinkled newborns out of their wombs. And yet, things went wrong, sometimes even before they could start. His chest tightened and his lungs ached.
“Raincloud’s cousin can’t have a child,” he suddenly disclosed. “The clan doesn’t trust the city clinic to fix her, and who knows where the fee would come from besides? The High Priestess says someone will have to give her a child, in the name of the Dark One…” How could he explain to an Elysian?
Kal nodded slowly. “The gods have always called upon our children for sacrifice,” he said, using a Valan word for “god.” “On the pyre, or in war. Or more gently, to be raised by strangers in a strange land.”
“You think my ‘god’ is a gentle one, then.” The words alienated him even as he spoke. The snake-devouring Dark One was unique, not to be named by any foreign word for “god”; and to think of Her as gentle jarred his senses. “You Elysians don’t even have a god, do you,” he observed, trying to repair the compartments in his mind.
“Several interstellar churches have branches here, and Spirit Callers come from Valedon.”
“It’s not the same. I mean—” Blackbear struggled for words. “I mean, a ‘god’ for all your people. A source of all goodness, which can never be lost nor diminished.”
Kal shook his head. “As a people, we serve no god.” He looked out reflectively. Blackbear noticed that Sunflower had climbed up the bench and made his way onto the branch of the nearby tree. “Long ago,” Kal reflected, “people served God, and knew they were immortal. Today, we serve ourselves, and know that we will die. The animals, in their ignorance, are better off.”
“That’s a morbid view,” said Blackbear uneasily.
“Of course it is,” said Kal with sudden energy. “I should know better. We serve human reason; we create ourselves. Perhaps even your own ‘Dark One’ is a human creation, too.”
“Only a tourist would say that,” Blackbear muttered.
“You’re right, I am thoroughly a tourist. At any rate, your Dark One shows wisdom, I think. Your children belong to the clan as a whole; and each of you needs at least one child. It’s part of your system, just as childlessness is a part of ours.”
“But systems can change,” Blackbear retorted. “Cannibalism used to be part of our ancestors’ ‘system.’ We don’t tolerate that any more.”
Kal laughed. “The rock-eaters didn’t either! Oh, well. You know, we owe a great debt to cannibalism. It remains one of the few things we all agree is wrong.”
“I would hope we agree on more than that,” Black
bear exclaimed. “Slavery is wrong, and thievery, and mistreatment of innocent creatures.”
“Even servos?”
That was a twist. “I’ve always treated servos well.” He recalled guiltily that he swore at his lab equipment on occasion. Meanwhile, Sunflower had grasped the next higher branch of the tree and his little feet slipped out from under, dangling in midair. Blackbear hurried to rescue him.
“You treat servos well,” Kal agreed, “But what if they spoke up and demanded constitutional rights? The right of visiting, for instance?”
“That’s absurd.” But he thought of Doggie uneasily. “How do you manage with that…that Cassi?” Blackbear recalled. “Isn’t she dangerously independent, too? Why haven’t the authorities come after her?”
“Cassi is not the only one,” said Kal quietly.
Blackbear felt a cold shock flow through him. Servos on the loose—like Torr…But surely the Valan safety devices would prevent that.
“It’s better to know,” Kal added. “The ones we know, we can learn from.”
Chapter 8
THE SHARER NEGOTIATIONS MADE STEADY PROGRESS, AS did the size of Raincloud’s belly, which now extended well ahead of her, “nearly as far as her train behind,” Iras teased. There was only one jarring note: the Papilion News put out an exposé of Elysian banks funding Valan production of interstellar missiles. The cash allegedly was laundered through lenders on several planets. If true, it was a serious treaty violation.
To Raincloud’s surprise, Verid shrugged it off. “The Valan missile connection is old news. Our banks lend everywhere; who can say where the cash comes to rest? The Papilians want to embarrass us; that’s why they brought it up now. They’re mad at us for going slow on the fruit flies.”
Raincloud was not so sure. Alin, for one, took a far dimmer view. She saw him on the holostage as usual, grilling the president of Bank Helicon. “You put up cash for planet-wrecking missiles on Valedon, and for water projects on bankrupt L’li,” he observed acidly. “Tell me, what will you finance next? Torture on Urulan?”
The next day the Guard announced a settlement of the L’liite crisis. Bank Helicon agreed to reschedule the defaulted loan, providing a ten year grace period before the next payment. The Guard would add development aid. In return, L’li agreed to an economic stabilization program.
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