Paradise Reclaimed

by Raymond Harris

  “Me? Magnus?”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Kat. “If you would like to say goodbye to magnus Teixeira, then I’ll take you to team Calliope.”

  She froze simply because she was stunned at her unexpected rise in status.

  Nuku embraced her. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

  “This is it, isn’t it Nuks?”

  “Yes sweets, I mean – magnus.”

  They kissed and then parted. “Okay Kat…”

  “Defender Sakamura ma’am.” Kat reminded her.

  “But… Okay… This’ll take some getting used to. Lead the way defender.”

  Nuku watched her walk away. She had steeled herself for this moment but still felt a pang of sadness. She turned briefly to give a childish wave but corrected herself and straightened her posture. Nuku knew without a doubt that Isla would assume her position of authority effortlessly. She was a born leader and wanted this more than anything, including her.

  “Shall we go?” Prax asked.

  “Certainly magnus,” said Nuku.

  “Prax,” he said.

  “And you can call me Ana, or Torv,” said the runner. “The formalities are only necessary around the other ranks. It’s a matter of discipline.”

  “So Prax, we’ve met before,” said Nuku.

  He smiled. “Yes, I remember. You are hard to forget, as are you Biyu. We all saw your match. Your presence here may cause quite a stir.”

  “Oh, they’ll soon tire of me,” she said slightly embarrassed. “I must admit, this is all overwhelming.”

  “Yes, you’ll experience a period of disorientation. It should only last a few days. You are both highly competent people,” said Prax to reassure them.

  “Good,” said Biyu, “then perhaps you can start by explaining your roles.”

  Torv spoke first. “I’ll be in charge of your martial skills training, although I’m sure you’ll catch on quickly. Weapons mainly…”

  “She’s highly skilled as will become apparent,” Prax offered.

  “And you Prax?” asked Nuku as they began to walk.

  “I’d rather explain when you are settled, it is not easily explained whilst you are distracted with so many new things.”

  They walked toward the forest. A troop of around twenty young recruits ran by in tight formation. Their eyes wandered when they noticed Biyu. The troop leader barked “eyes front”.

  Torv directed them to four hover scooters. “You familiar with these?”

  “Impressive,” said Nuku. “It’s been a while. We used these in rescue,” she said as she hopped on.

  “Modified?” asked Biyu walking around hers.

  “Improved,” Torv answered. “Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to weaponised combat models, but these transport models can reach quite a speed and you can take them higher.”

  Biyu hopped on confidently and tested the antigrav stability by jumping and leaning.

  “I’ll lead the way,” said Torv.

  And with that she headed off at a moderate pace. When she looked behind her to see how they were faring she laughed. Prax had his usual grimace of concentration but Nuku and Biyu both had wide smiles. She picked up the pace and took them off the path and through the forest just for the thrill.

  53

  Akash

  He was anxious as they flew to Seoul. This was a high-risk trip and he would have cancelled it if so much weren’t at stake. Aviva’s security assessment had painted a disturbing picture. Tension between the North and South had flared again. It might have just been the usual, cyclical bellicose ranting primarily for domestic political reasons, if it weren’t for the shift in regional geopolitics. The US under control of the Texans had become more isolationist and impatient with the antics of failed states and were less inclined to use aid as an arm of foreign policy. Even though North Korea had suffered another devastating famine, the world hardly noticed or cared. The rise of Chinese corporations (Shunyata used several to manufacture and assemble various components, much to his regret – not that he had much choice) had meant the Chinese were becoming less sympathetic to their old communist allies. Indeed, the Hong Kong group, along with key South Korean corporations, saw an opportunity to find a new source of cheap labour amongst a people desperate for even just one secure meal a day and had plans to set up factory cities to undercut those on mainland China. They had argued (behind closed doors) that North Korea was becoming a significant obstacle to the unification of Chinese and South Korean business interests, particularly in linking the major Chinese industrial city of Shenyang (ancient Manchu) with Seoul. What had initially begun as a plan to modernise North Korea when the regime collapse had gradually become a reason to force its collapse. They were now waiting for North Korea to fire the first shot so they could use it as an excuse to solve the problem of North Korea once and for all. This had been the hardest thing for him to accept when he entered business, the realisation that at the global level war was just an extension of economics and that all wars were ultimately over trade and resources.

  He looked back down the plane and saw Tshering chatting animatedly to Connie and Archi. She was dressed in western clothes (jeans and a simple Italian designed two-piece) and was excited about the trip because it was a chance to get out of the sometimes constricting traditionalism of Bhutan. It was also a chance for her to meet the team and exercise her considerable social skills. Pema was still sitting next to Li Li and Akoi and seemed to be teaching them Dzongkha in exchange for snippets of French, English, German and Nuba; just simple words: nose, ear, seat, girl, boy, with Pema reacting with curiosity and wonder at each variation and peculiar pronunciation. She had initially been shy around the team but like most precocious children it hadn’t lasted long. Now she couldn’t get enough of Li Li and she was unabashedly fascinated by Akoi’s black skin and nose ring.

  They had left early in the morning. Tshering had argued that the team needed some R&R, so the afternoon and evening were to be free. Aviva had naturally raised security concerns and demanded that each person be fitted with a discreet homing device linked the Shunyata’s global positioning system. She had also devised an emergency evacuation procedure with a security team on twenty-four hour standby. With that in place the team had agreed on a schedule. The afternoon would be spent sightseeing, with Tshering and the team taking Pema to the world’s largest indoor theme park, Lotte World (even the normally cynical Archi had wanted to see “the damned monstrosity”).

  Whilst this was happening he would be meeting with his bioengineering company and arranging to relocate everyone to the safety of Bangkok. Then, in the evening he would look after Pema whilst Tshering went out with the team, half, including Tshering, to karaoke bars and the others to watch a video gaming tournament (David’s idea). The following morning was set-aside for the visit to the clinic.

  It was only a week to the launch and there was still too much to do. There had been delays in the construction of jumpers for the colonisation phase. His engineers in Brazil had re-engineered standard two hundred and fifty seat jet fuselages to withstand the vacuum and temperature of space (covered by rumours of low-orbit space tourism) but it was the larger cargo fuselages that were the problem, especially in designing void engines powerful enough to create a v-field around a fuselage the size of a C-5 Galaxy. This was the single most expensive part of the operation with the two fully equipped cargo jumpers costing half a billion. If just one failed it would seriously jeopardise the mission, leaving the colony without vital equipment. They had already sent a small transporter aloft and successfully jumped it to an orbit around Neptune, but they were yet to create a stable v-field around the cargo jumpers. If the v-field failed on the ascent, the wingless fuselage would crash to Earth; if it failed at the point of the jump it might be sent permanently into the void or jump to some unknown location. At the moment he wasn’t sure what the problem was, it could either be one of the complex harmonic calculations needed to re-calibrate spacetime or it was one of simple physical
limitations in the quantum circuitry of the void generator. He was leaning toward the former, especially in relation to calculating the amount of energy they would need to extract from the void. A mistake in the order of ten decimal points was enough to create a catastrophic failure.

  He was running another simulation on his screen when Tshering tapped him on the shoulder. “You should have a break too. Come and join us. David is going to sing us a song in his traditional language. I understand he has a beautiful voice. Apparently his father sang in a famous indigenous rock group.”

  He looked up at her. She had the smile that he could not dare refuse. The smile that said she knew best and at these times she was usually right. He was not that good at looking after himself.

  The clinic was in a nondescript suite of professional offices in a modern tower, alongside an orthodontist, a plastic surgeon, a skin specialist and a podiatrist, all specialising in the growing South Korean obsession with physical perfection. Kum-Ji was a pleasant, roundish woman with thick glasses. The surprise was her genetically enhanced daughter Alice, aged ten, as tall as her mother, naturally slender but carrying a little too much self-indulgent puppy fat, just on the pretty side of the Koran average and dressed rather plainly and practically. When she saw Li Li she rushed to hug and kiss her warmly, speaking in fluent French about her soeur gènètique. Then she turned to the rest and spoke in carefully articulated English. “Welcome. I will speak for my mother. Her English is not so good, although her Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese are all excellent. You see; we cater mostly to the immediate region. I will also be assisting my mother with the procedure. I have the necessary experience…”

  “Alice is very competent. She has considerable medical knowledge,” added Li Li. “I’ll assist as well, after all this is my specialty.”

  Alice smiled politely and bowed just a little. “I had hoped to become a doctor, genetic medicine, a fertility specialist.”

  Her mother smiled and hugged her proudly.

  “Had hoped?” asked Akash.

  She nodded quickly in the typical Korean manner. “Yes, but now I will learn these skills on Eden and I rather suspect they don’t have universities there yet.”

  The team looked at each other, surprised at Alice’s candour.

  “Her skills will be needed. She is an excellent gene reader,” explained Li Li.

  “Gene reader?” asked Akash, unfamiliar with the term.

  “You should understand,” said Alice impatiently. “It is like physics, a matter of pattern recognition. The DNA sequence is a scale of four variables: ACGT. These form the basis of the code just like musical notes in a scale. Genomic forms can be read like music. Complex forms are genetic symphonies.”

  “Alice has high pattern recognition skills. She is also a musical prodigy. She mastered Chopin when she was six,” added Li Li.

  Akash was momentarily speechless. He hadn’t made a final decision. Li Li sensed his discomfort but dismissed it.

  “It is inevitable, logical,” she said. “It would be irrational not to…”

  “And I want to go, we all want to go… we all will go. It makes sense,” said Alice firmly.

  “Perhaps we can discuss this later,” suggested Tshering diplomatically. “I’d like to get this done, especially Pema. She’s a bit tired from her adventures yesterday and I promised her I’d take her shopping before we fly back this evening.”

  Alice smiled and squatted down to Pema’s eye level. “Of course, we had no intention of making Pema wait.” She looked directly at Pema, smiled and took her hand. Pema’s eyes were wide with wonder; a child was in command and would look after her.

  The process was surprisingly straightforward. Akash, Tshering and Pema were escorted into a typical doctor’s consulting room. Kum-Ji handed them copies of their genomic reports. Akash had a genetic disposition towards Parkinson’s and latent genes for a type of bone cancer. Tshering had a fifty percent risk of developing breast cancer and type two diabetes and Pema shared Akash’s risk of Parkinson’s and her mother’s risk of ovarian cancer. These all had ready genetic cures thanks to the Huxley database. Pema endured the injections because Alice administered them with a delicate touch. Alice said they should expect to see a ten to twenty point increase in her IQ over time with the proper stimulation. Her immune system had been boosted as had her cardio-vascular efficiency, and a gene that created a disposition towards short-sightedness was altered so that she could expect perfect vision well into her seniority. Similar alterations had been made to Akash and Tshering but because of their age they could not expect to see as much improvement. The good news was that because it was germ-line therapy the improvements would be inherited and the viral vectors would find their way to the child growing in Tshering’s womb via her blood. There were some genetic predispositions that they had yet to find a way to alter, Akash was warned to watch his heart for any sign of arrhythmia, but that was manageable, and Tshering had a gene linked to homosexuality, which no one considered needed altering. They were finished in half an hour.

  Tshering left with Pema with the reward of ice cream. Akash remained so that he could talk to Kum-Ji and Alice to warn them of the increased chance of conflict with the North. With Li Li assisting, the whole team was done in three hours. Alice was particularly excited with Akoi’s genome, observing that she carried the oldest and most varied genome she had ever seen, with a haplogroup dating back into humanity’s ancient past. Prosperous was next and was surprised to find he had some Arab genes, which he knew was probably the result of raids during the period of the Arab slave traders. David carried the next oldest and it showed clear links to an ancient Indian ancestry, much to Akash’s surprise. The youngest genome belonged to Constance, the result of a Viking and Irish ancestry, both genetically isolated communities far from the motherland of Africa, and because their skin was fair, both Archimedes and Constance had the genes controlling the production of melanin altered to protect them from skin cancer.

  Akash dismissed the team except for Li Li and asked them to meet in the hotel lobby at a set hour for the trip home. When they left Li Li became serious and suggested that Alice leave with them, reminding him of the worsening security situation.

  Kum-Ji nodded calmly and spoke in halting English. “We live like this long time. I stay, Alice go.”

  He looked at Alice who remained stoic. “This was expected. I can leave with you immediately. My mother and I have already decided.”

  Li Li spoke to Alice animatedly in rapid French. Akash could see the tears welling in Kum-Ji’s eyes, but she maintained a façade of determined discipline.

  “But we’ve made no plans for…” he protested.

  “She is too valuable an asset,” said Li Li assertively, not brooking any argument.

  “But the legal documentation, permissions, visas…” he complained without conviction.

  Li Li smiled condescendingly. “You have been acting outside national laws for some time and she won’t need any papers on Eden. I am sure Aviva can arrange whatever is necessary.”

  He looked again at Kum-Ji’s steely resolve. “She go,” she said forcefully.

  “They have already said their goodbyes. They have decided,” said Li Li.

  He tried to find an objection. He had clearly been ambushed and felt he should refuse, simply to assert his authority. He frowned at Li Li. Ever since she had joined the team she had pushed her own agenda and even though he wanted to resist her, he had to admit she was more often right than not. He had known all along that where possible the Crickets would settle on Eden, but that was to be some time in the future. Given that he had deliberately sought prodigies for his program it made no logical sense to deny them because of some sentimental and erroneous adherence to the conventions of chronological age.

  “What is your developmental age, cognitive, emotional, moral reasoning?” he asked Alice, barely masking his irritation.

  Alice regarded him calmly. “IQ in the range of 160 – 170, depending on the test
, postconventional with a correspondingly high emotional intelligence…”

  “Sauveterre has tested her. Her true age, her developmental age, is effectively adult…”

  Alice bowed humbly. “I surpass the average adult on all scales. Akash, do not consider me a child. I am not. Only this body is.”

  “And you want this?”

  Her head remained bowed. “It is my destiny, yes. I don’t belong here on Earth. I want to be with my Cricket sisters and brothers, with Li Li. It is where I belong.”

  “It will be dangerous,” he added, knowing it was a futile point.

  “It will be more dangerous to stay,” she replied matter-of-factly. “This is necessary.”

  He looked again at Kum-Ji. She remained resolute. “And you?”

  “Some stay, some go. She go, I stay. Work to do, here.” She stood and reached for Alice. They hugged. There seemed to be little emotion, at least not in front of him. Perhaps they had exhausted all the emotion in private. It reminded him of parents forced to send children way during war telling them to put on a brave face, except of course, Alice was not really a child.

  The team seemed unsurprised to see Alice arrive with Akash and Li Li. Tshering seemed to have sensed that this was a possibility and welcomed her with a polite hug. Pema had no understanding of the subtleties of what had just occurred and lightened the mood by showing off a new dress, topped off with an incongruous panda headdress, replete with ears, which everyone allowed was super-kawaii.

  On the flight home Aviva contacted him to say that there had been a power struggle in the North Korean armed forces and the hardline general Lee Jung-Su had been promoted to the head of the defence force. In response South Korea went to full alert. Her assessment was that war was inevitable and was a matter of days away. She recommended Shunyata’s assets be evacuated immediately. He agreed and gave the order, informing her that one asset was already on board. Later he took Alice aside to tell her. Her response was muted. “It is inevitable. We have been waiting. My mother is prepared. It will not last long. The North has nothing but lies and tantrums. They are a house of straw.”