Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  Ay’r bought time looking over ’Dward’s body for marks or bruises, but none were visible. After so many abductions, these Islanders – these Sanqq’ites – must know how to handle recalcitrant Drylanders with a minimum of trauma. Suddenly Ay’r realized that this was the first time he was seeing ’Dward naked in normal – if slightly dimmed – light. And ’Dward was as physically attractive as any male Ay’r had ever seen, although, because he was a Pelagian, he was longer and leaner, lighter-skinned.

  “’Dward!” Ay’r tried waking him gently but got no response.

  “You may require this!” Azura said, showing him a skin injector. “A nerve stimulator.”

  “No!” Ay’r said. “I’d prefer for him to awaken naturally.”

  “That might not be for an hour or more Sol Rad.,” the Medic said.

  “I’ll wait. He’s been through enough already today.”

  Zhon Azura interrupted, “You should see your father. He’s waiting.”

  All five travelers, still accompanied discreetly by the water-sled drivers, fit onto several gravi-sleds, with Azura and Ay’r in the lead. Their way led along the boarded path closest to the ocean, dotted with residences, mostly hidden behind foliage, until at one of many cross paths, Azura turned left and they slowly began to ascend a much steeper path, almost hidden by overhanging foliage. The gravi-sled didn’t stop until it had reached the top of the rise. The boarded path led sharply down on either side. Before them was a structure that looked like any of the other residences, save for its altitude.

  Azura gestured Ay’r up the ramp. The others had begun to arrive on their sleds and followed at a slight distance. The ramp led to a deck completely circling a many-windowed residence. Shades over all of them blocked out sunlight. Ay’r wondered why. He halted momentarily to look up and down the length of the island on either side and was just able to make out what might be the two other islands in the distance. This appeared to be the highest spot – the views were dazzling.

  Inside, the house seemed to have been gutted: another balcony completely surrounded a large, dim room, most of it crisscrossed by Hume-high screens. A stocky man with strong facial features met Ay’r.

  “He’s been prepared for the meeting. I’m Girt TallChief. Please follow me.” He gestured Ay’r down a narrow ramp into the room. “Alone, if you please. Too many people.” To the others, he said, “You may remain on the balcony. Please don’t speak loudly or move suddenly. It’s too distracting.”

  Ay’r hadn’t really prepared himself for this meeting; he had been so concerned about ’Dward’s safety and about reuniting the Ib’r family, he had no idea what to expect. From what TallChief – was he what the Metro.-Terrans called a Native American? – said, it all suggested that his father was in extremely frail health.

  “This is merely a formality,” TallChief said, pointing out the molecular identification screen Ay’r would have to pass through.

  “I must tell you a bit about him,” TallChief said quietly. “Some eighteen Pelagian years ago, your father was in a serious T-pod accident and was critically injured. Many of his limbs and internal organs were crushed. We weren’t equipped for such a massive replacement. We did manage to get him back to the Islands while he was still conscious, and he insisted that we salvage as much of his brain as possible while it was still alive. Because of who he was, this was done, although it required our entire medical staff working at emergency level for several days for the major work, and years more for details. Since then, all of his brain functions have been Cyberized. Only recently, when he himself considered the operation successful, did your father allow his physical brain to be disconnected and buried with the rest of his remains.”

  Ay’r felt his legs begin to slide out from under him. He felt TallChief’s arms supporting him to a seat, but Ay’r couldn’t help himself. After coming all this way, after all these years, after all he had gone through since he had been an infant, the disappointment was too much to bear.

  “He’s taking it hard,” Ay’r heard TallChief say to someone nearby. Then to Ay’r: “Would you like to rest? Or water? Or ...?”

  So it would be as the Truth-Sayer had predicted. He wouldn’t find whom he was seeking, but one alike. Still, no matter how alike, it wouldn’t be the same. Ay’r felt so terribly hollow, he turned in the chair to find something that would sustain him: Oudma’s face and, next to her, Alli and P’al and ’Harles. All of them watching him carefully, the water-sled drivers behind them speaking, evidently repeating to them what TallChief had just told Ay’r about his father. Oudma bit her lip, sharing Ay’r’s pain.

  “I’ll be fine in a second,” Ay’r said. “It’s ... a shock.”

  He would be fine in a second. After all, it had been too much to think that his father... . Ay’r stood up and TallChief walked him into an area, screened by transparent panels. He saw a Hume male sitting at a swivel desk looking over computations. Ay’r knew instantly this was his father.

  “He’s a holo?” Ay’r asked.

  “Yes and no,” TallChief whispered. “More like a construction of his own mind in time and space, amplified by all these electronics. He seldom goes into such detail and depth.”

  TallChief cleared his voice, and Ferrex Baldwin Sanqq’ looked up. His facial features had been fixed so remarkably in Ay’r’s mind from holos at some past time that, seeing him, Ay’r felt tears come to his eyes.

  “My son!” Ferrex Sanqq’ uttered, his voice choking. He stood up from the desk and pushed it aside. Then he did a strange thing: he fell slowly to one knee in Ay’r’s direction.

  Ay’r was alarmed. “Father!”

  Sanqq’ gestured him away with a wave of his hand, raised now in greeting or in benediction. “I never thought I would live to see you.” His face was contorted in ecstasy. “You ... complete wonder!”

  “Father, please get up. I –”

  “You wonder!” his father repeated. “First of the Entire Men! Adam of a New Age. I greet you!”

  Ay’r was completely stunned by his father’s greeting. He looked toward TallChief to see how to respond. However, TallChief had also fallen to one knee and was staring at Ay’r with that same rapturous look. On the balcony, Azura and the other Islanders were also kneeling to him. Why?

  “Please stand up, Father. All of you, please.”

  “Do you see his perfection, TallChief?” Ferrex Sanqq’ asked. “Do you, Azura?”

  “I see his perfection!” TallChief uttered. Behind, on the balcony, the other Islanders echoed him.

  “I have seen it for over an hour,” Azura said. “With growing wonder.”

  What was going on here? “I’m hardly perfect,” Ay’r tried to persuade them. “Please get up, all of you. This is ... very embarrassing for me.”

  “That’s the very wonder of you!” Ferrex Sanqq’ said, rising slowly, and still smiling. “If you were perfect, you would have been a failure. You know I followed your progress for decades, until circumstances became such that I could no longer. And even then, once we were settled here, I still begged like a child that the few contacts we made with the MC be aimed so I might catch a glimpse of you. I regret only that we cannot embrace. Do you forgive me?”

  Ay’r didn’t ask for what: For the past, he knew.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. He was still so bewildered by the unexpected effusiveness of the greeting.

  “I know it must have been difficult for you. And growing up thinking such terrible things about me.” Sanqq’ shook his head. “It was also difficult for me, knowing you would grow up as an orphan, perhaps even a pariah. Certainly it pained me to have to leave you among my enemies. I thought often perhaps that they would teach you to have contempt for me.”

  “I didn’t suffer much,” Ay’r admitted. “I met a few kind women. And if I felt anything about you it was ... curiosity – you were always such a mystery!”

  “A mystery, yes,” Sanqq’ admitted. “But that couldn’t be helped if the Greater Plan were to be achie
ved. As for you, I couldn’t interfere. As a scientist, you understand, I had to make certain that you were entirely on your own, and found your own way, and grew at your own pace, and that whatever tendencies and flaws you might develop would be completely your own. No matter the risks to our relationship. Do you understand?”

  “A bit,” Ay’r said, although he understood very little really. “But ... what is this Greater Plan?”

  “I could have kept you close to me, tended you like the rarest of flowers or viruses,” his father went on, ignoring Ay’r’s question. “I would have, you know. But Lars’son helped me to see that wouldn’t do, that we needed complete and Cyberlike objectivity. And because of that, because you were so completely yourself by the time you were halfway through Ed. and Dev., we could leave Sobieski IX and come here to begin in earnest on the Greater Plan, and do all this!”

  The holo – or projection of the surrounding Cyberized brain of Ferrex Baldwin Sanqq’ – was beginning to waver and details to fade.

  “This Greater Plan,” Ay’r tried again. “What does it have to do with Relfianism and with me and with abducting Dryland youths?”

  “I see I’m losing integrity.” Again Sanqq’ ignored his question. “I’m too excited. You’ll come back again, and we’ll talk. Go to Lars’son now. He’ll tell you all.” Sanqq’ smiled the fond, almost-ecstatic smile again. “My son! First of the Entire Men! You ... absolute wonder!"

  “I’ll come back,” Ay’r said, afraid of tiring his father, afraid of ... he wasn’t sure what.

  He walked back up the ramp alone, then out of the residence and got onto the gravi-sled. Azura joined him, clearly moved by what he had witnessed.

  “This has been a historic meeting, Ser Sanqq’.”

  “If only I understood what it was all about,” Ay’r commented. He turned and caught P’al’s eye. But if his companion knew something, he wasn’t letting on. “I suppose I’d better do as my father said, if I’m ever to discover what all this nonsense is about.”

  “Nonsense?” Azura asked.

  “You know, all the bowing and this Greater Plan and –” Ay’r stopped, seeing Azura’s evident displeasure.

  “Apologies,” Ay’r tried. “But something is going on, and I don’t know what it is!”

  Now Azura began, “You said before that you wished to see ’Nton Ib’r. He is on our way to Creed Lars’son’s residence. And perhaps ... perhaps he will serve as an explanation ...” Azura’s words trailed off.

  “I’m certain ’Nton’s father and sister would very much like to see him,” Ay’r said. Oudma and ’Harles had come out of the house and agreed readily.

  “Then that will be our next destination,” Azura said.

  After a short ride on the gravi-sleds, they arrived back at the oceanfront. Azura stopped at the edge of a boarded platform leading directly down to the sand. Without a word, he got off and began to walk, apparently headed toward the water’s edge. Ay’r followed, and as soon as his sandaled feet touched the ground, he stopped and took them off to feel the soft warmth of sun-heated sand under his feet. Looking back, he noticed the other sleds pulling up. The drivers remained on, but the two Ib’rs, P’al, and Alli Clark came toward Ay’r. He waited for them.

  Azura had reached the shoreline, turned left, and continued walking.

  “I don’t understand?” ’Harles said. “I thought we were going to see my son.”

  “We are,” Ay’r said.

  Oudma had already removed her sandals, and now she ran down to the water’s edge. Her father was barefoot, too, experiencing beach sand for the first time.

  “We’ve never seen the ocean until yesterday,” ’Harles explained to Alli Clark.

  “We’ll go in for a swim later,” Alli Clark said, at which ’Harles looked skeptical.

  “C’mon!” Ay’r urged Oudma, who was splashing in the surf.

  Azura had gone straight on. Suddenly he stopped and turned, waiting for them to catch up. When they did a few minutes later, Ay’r could see what Azura was looking at: about five yards away, sitting on the sand at the very edge of the surf was a tall, blond Drylander youth. In his hands he held a tiny naked infant, whom he was lifting and then dropping slowly just as the surf came in. Although both were in profile, Ay’r could see the youth speaking to the infant and the baby’s laughter at the game.

  “Is that my son?” ’Harles asked, his voice quavering. He and Oudma had come up behind Ay’r and each put a hand on his shoulders.

  “That’s ’Nton Ib’r,” Azura said. Then he called out, “’Tonno!”

  ’Nton turned and smiled. He waved and stood up, a tall, tanned youth. Placing the gurgling infant onto his shoulder, he came forward, looking at Azura steadily, but every once in a while at the others, questioningly.

  “I don’t think he knows who we are!” Oudma said, as Azura stepped forward to meet ’Nton. He put out a hand to Azura’s face and kissed his lips casually. Azura reached up for the infant and took him in his arms. Together, the trio turned – a tableau, a frozen portrait – until Azura released ’Nton’s arm and pushed him forward, saying, “Go!”

  The look on ’Nton’s face – it was ’Dward’s face, and Oudma’s and ’Harles’s, too, although subtly different, Ay’r recognized – was one of realization as he looked at them. He looked back at Azura, who was holding the baby close to his chest and who nodded. When ’Nton looked at them again, he was certain of who they were. He smiled.

  Ay’r moved to one side and watched them greet one another, watched ’Harles’s spirits rise as ’Nton embraced him and Oudma, all of them talking at top speed, trying to catch up, to answer questions, to confirm that, yes, his family was all here, together.

  Azura came closer to watch the Ib’rs’ reunion. He was holding the baby, feeding it his fingertip as a teether. Ay’r joined him.

  “That’s why you acted so strangely before when I kept asking about ’Nton,” Ay’r said. “He’s your lover! I guess you never expected to meet his family.”

  “It is unexpected.” Azura waited until all greetings were completed among the Ib’r. Then he held out the baby and said, “This is Cas’sio!”

  ’Nton took the baby from Azura and held out the infant to ’Harles. “Father, this is your grandchild, Cas’sio.”

  ’Harles looked at the child, and at Azura, who now stood next to ’Nton, holding him closely by the shoulders. But Oudma had squealed, “Yours?” to her brother and had reached for the infant immediately. Baby Cas’sio gurgled in her arms and began to play with her long blonde hair.

  “Yours!” ’Harles seemed to ponder the fact. “Where is his mother?”

  “I’m Cas’sio’s mother,” ’Nton said. “Zhon is Cas’sio’s father!”

  In the silence that followed these two seemingly irreconcilable statements, the mild surf and Cas’sio’s gurgling could be head distinctly.

  Ay’r turned to the child. All the travelers did.

  “I gave birth to Cas’sio four months ago,” ’Nton said lightly. “Zhon and I – that’s our house!” he pointed behind him to a low residence of weathered light wood and open windows on the beach.

  “How can this be?” ’Harles asked in a tiny voice.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you about the Islands? Or about the Greater Plan?” ’Nton asked and looked at Azura.

  “They arrived so suddenly that we were unable to explain it all at the guest residence,” Azura said apologetically. Evidently he thought that by seeing him and ’Nton and their child first, it would explain itself.

  “It’s your father’s work, Ser Sanqq’, following Lydia Relfi’s First Principle of Reproduction,” Azura went on. “The reason why she and her followers were banned from the First Matriarchy, the reason why her experiments were destroyed, and why her followers, including your father, were discredited under the Second Matriarchy.”

  “What was her First Principle?” Alli Clark had the wits to ask.

  “It’s no surprise that you don’t know it. I doub
t there are a dozen Humes alive outside the Unmoored Islands who know it.”

  P’al now spoke up. “The principle is that all Humes possess the right to reproduction, and all Humes ought to possess the capacity for reproduction.”

  “Given the Matriarchal emphasis on childbirth, why would that pose a problem?” Alli Clark asked.

  “All Humes. Yourself and Oudma, yes, but also myself and ’Nton Ib’r, and yourselves, too!” Azura said. “All Humes, regardless of gender.”

  “The abductions of Drylanders!” Ay’r all but cried out.

  “After the successful application of the procedure to all of us, your father still needed to know how it worked on all types of Humes.”

  “Then the injections are connected to this!” Ay’r was beginning to put it together.

  “The injections ready the youths before they actually arrive here,” Azura said.

  “Ready them for what?” Alli Clark asked.

  “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been telling you? Ready them for impregnation. Ready them for childbirth!”

  As a Social Scientist, Ay’r was aware that new concepts which flew in the face of deeply ingrained belief systems were extremely difficult to accept. Even so, this one was difficult to even admit as practical.

  “Are you saying that ’Nton has been injected with a mechanism for growing ovaries?” he asked.

  “Not only ’Nton, myself and every Islander, too. And it’s more than ovaries. A quite refined approximation of a complete womb! Given the state of mammalian biology, the technology for male viviparturition wasn’t too difficult for your father,” Azura added, as though it were the most common thing in the galaxy. “Females were required at first to donate the required cells for ovary and fallopian tubes to be cloned and implanted inside the male’s body.