by Mark Wandrey
“Perfectly fine. Better than fine, actually.”
“Then what can I do for you?”
“It’s probably simpler if you access my implant.”
“Okay,” he said and picked up a medical scanner before approaching her. Minu obliged by lifting her blouse to expose her stomach, so the doctor could press the sensor against her skin. It wasn’t exactly necessary for the device to function, but it increased the accuracy and decreased the need to re-query the implanted robot. In a second, the device beeped, and he uploaded the data to his tablet.
These types of visits were not uncommon in the modern era. After Minu brought back the ancient People’s codex of medical data, using robotic implants to monitor a person’s health had become commonplace. Plateau and New Jerusalem were both looking at the feasibility of having every baby implanted at birth.
When Dr. Robinson moved from the hospital in Tranquility to University Hospital, he’d explained to Minu that every day he’d get several visits from patients who’d been prompted by their monitors to see him. “It doesn’t really make my job easier,” he explained, “but the implants are saving lives.”
He examined the data for a second then looked at her, his eyebrows climbing. Minu giggled and felt her cheeks getting hot. “You’ve been up to some naughtiness,” he chided.
“Doctor!” She laughed and shook her head. “I’m a married woman.”
“You decided on the spur of the moment to conceive? It’s pretty much impossible for the implant to fail. Oh, never mind, I see here where you deactivated it. According to the recorded data, you became pregnant in twenty-three hours.”
“We decided it was time.”
“Congratulations!” He reviewed the data and uploaded copies to the office’s network before picking up another instrument. “If you could remove your blouse, I’ll have my nurse come in, and we’ll do some checking up.”
A half hour later, re-dressed, she sat next to him as he laid out the basic prenatal regime he wanted her to follow. “Since this is your first legitimate pregnancy—”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean simply that you are going to carry this child to term.”
“Oh, sorry.” The doctor was one of only a handful of people on the planet that knew of Lilith’s existence and Lilith’s parentage. He was Lilith’s physician of record too. Getting her to agree to let him examine her had been a battle of epic proportions. “What about taking it easy?”
“This isn’t the old days,” he reminded her. “We know a lot more about human physiology. It is better for you and the baby if you are as active as possible up until seven months. You like to run, keep it up. Pretty soon, I want you to be a little more cautious of your midriff in martial arts, but keep to your established fitness routine for now.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep. You’ve got better abdominal muscles than most men I know.” She smiled and shook her head. “Start some Kegel exercises, and we’ll get you on neonatal supplements and monitor your implant. Other than that, congratulations, Mom!”
“I’m already a mom.”
“True, but you get all the fun of growing this one.”
“And the pain of delivering it.”
“I won’t lie to you; it won’t feel good. But women are designed to give birth. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be here. We have medications that can take away pretty much all the pain.”
“No,” she said quickly. She didn’t know why, and she couldn’t explain. Luckily for her, she had a doctor who didn’t need an explanation.
“I don’t deliver a lot of babies. I started as a trauma doc. But you’d be surprised how many women have the same opinion of the drugs you do. And before you ask, they don’t know why, either.”
* * *
She was walking from the University Hospital to her office after her appointment when her communicator chirped. She plucked it from her belt and answered. “Dean Groves.”
“Chosen Groves, this is Director Porter with the Plateau Historical Society.”
“I recognize your voice, Director. What can I do for you?”
“We have the results from the genetic tests.”
Minu was not prepared to hear from him. It had been more than a month since his fateful visit to her island. In that time, she’d gotten pregnant and helped discover the planet moving machine on Remus. “What do they say?”
“I think it best if you come in, if you have time?”
Minu nearly told him where he could file his thoughts, then considered it better not to. Maybe I am becoming more diplomatic in my old age, she decided. “Sure.”
It would take longer to walk to the garage to get her car and fly to the Tranquility offices of the Historical Society than to hail a cab, so she hung up and found the taxi function on her communicator. A hundred meters away was a pickup zone. By the time she got there, a yellow aerocar cab was circling for a landing. Minu hopped in and told the older female driver where she wanted to go. “No problem,” the driver said, and the cab leaped into the air.
Minu had driven an aerocar for years, and she admired the cabbie’s skill with the vehicles. Watching how the aerocars fought with each other and a thousand other vehicles, both slow and fast, in the skies above Tranquility every day made it hard to believe the gravitic-powered craft had only been commonplace for a decade. The driver operated the vehicle with the same skill as most drivers, flying as if she’d been born behind the controls. In five minutes, the cab descended onto the rooftop landing pad of a ten-story office tower on the opposite side of the city.
“Thanks,” Minu called after she’d handed the woman her fare plus a generous tip.
“Thank you!” the driver responded. She was back in the air before the door closed.
Minu took a second to look out over the bustling city. It wasn’t nearly as busy as the metropolises of the Concordian core worlds. It didn’t even rate a single, small Portal Spire, a building that, as its name implied, soared thousands of meters into the sky and held many Portals for off-world travelers. The spires usually had multiple landing platforms for the flurry of flying transports that came and went carrying cargo and passengers.
In the distance, a pair of new hotels stood out from the skyline. They were nothing compared to the smallest Portal Spires she’d seen, but both had multiple landing decks on different levels. “We’re growing up,” she said to the light afternoon breeze as she pulled her hat down tighter. The Julast sun was blazing hot. Merciless. She began to wonder again if the world moving machine could be safely operated.
Inside the skyscraper, away from the relentless sun, she clipped the hat’s band onto her belt as the elevator descended. A few steps from the elevator, she was at the offices of the Plateau Historical Society.
Despite the reputation imparted to them by her father, the office spoke of the same simple conservative academia she could find in any of a dozen offices in her own university. The outer waiting room was decorated with dozens of pictures, from old Earth digital prints taken by the original colonists to chemical emulsions on paper during the less technological eras and holographic projections no more than a few years old. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” she said and turned away from the pictures. The receptionist was a woman about Minu’s age who waited with a patient smile on her face. “Please tell Director Porter than Minu Groves is here to see him.”
“Chosen Minu Groves?” The receptionist’s expression changed from patient to excited. Minu nodded. “I’ll let him know right away.”
Minu thanked her and turned back to the images. She was familiar with some of them from her education and experience. It wasn’t long before she came upon an old digital image of a camp with a hundred men, women, and children. They all looked dirty and tired, but they also looked hopeful.
She knew the picture well. It was probably the most famous one in Plateau. It was taken less than a week after the colonists arrived on Bellatrix and Earth died. There was Mindy Harper, front and
center, hand-in-hand with her husband, Billy. His arm was in a cast, but no one ever knew why. They’d spent most of their time staying alive in those early days. Even Mindy wouldn’t start keeping her diary for months.
The entire wall was dedicated to the colonists and the time that followed their arrival. As she waited, Minu moved through her ancestor’s lifetime, into the dark ages, and onward to modern times. Then, to her chagrin she found herself looking at a modern image of her standing at an award ceremony. She was losing her third star and receiving an honorary award from the planetary ruling council for bringing back the medical codex. She looked just like she felt that day—uncomfortable at all the attention.
“There’s room for one or two more pictures of you,” the deep, manly voice of Director Porter said from behind her.
Minu glanced over her shoulder and snorted. “I’m semi-retired already.”
“Those of us who study history and those who make history don’t believe that for a moment.”
“Really? Where do you see me earning another picture? I’m just a teacher and a mo—” she stuttered for a moment, almost letting the howler out of the bag, “moderately successful Chosen.”
The director cocked an eyebrow but didn’t pursue her hesitation. “You have one more star to lose, at the least.”
Minu snorted and laughed at him. “You obviously don’t know anything about Chosen politics.”
“At least as much as you know about how the tides of history favor certain people.”
Minu turned back and speared him with her most withering ‘badass Chosen’ stare. It bounced off his armor to no effect.
“Won’t you step into my office?”
His personal office showed the same conservative taste as the outer office; they were no doubt of his own design. She glanced around the modest appointments and nodded in approval, which he noticed, then smiled.
“Rather like your university, we operate on the generosity of patrons and the government. I do not approve of wasting their credits on frivolous adornments or self-aggrandizing furniture.” He gestured to a trio of comfortable chairs around a small table. She found herself liking the man.
There was a small tray on the table holding a pitcher of ice water and a selection of fruits and vegetables. He continued to display his skills as a host by pouring her a glass of water and holding the tray for her while she selected a few carrot sticks to munch on.
“I expected alcohol for bad news,” she said after a drink and a stick.
He shrugged and took a drink. “I can arrange that, but I know you aren’t much of a social drinker.”
“You know me well then. It doesn’t become a Chosen to be a public drunk.”
“The current First doesn’t really share that conviction,” he said.
Minu’s eyes narrowed. She’d heard rumors, but never direct corroboration. There weren’t many Chosen crazy enough to call out the First Among the Chosen. Minu had caught Jacob with his pants down once, but she’d never heard of him being drunk in public.
“That is none of my concern,” she said, and he merely shrugged. “I’d like to hear what you discovered.”
“Certainly,” he said and picked up a tablet. The tablet had a built-in holographic display, and soon a trio of images was hovering between them. “First, let me apologize for taking so long to get back to you.” Minu shook her head and gestured dismissively, so he continued. “No, really. We’ve been a bit hampered because our genetic research team must straddle three different computer systems. We’ve been trying to modernize our records by migrating them to Concordia-made systems, but progress is understandably slow because of compatibility.”
“I completely understand. We had the same constant challenge when I worked in the Chosen science branch.”
He nodded and continued. “With your genetic code in place, we began to search for matches. But we were unable to find anything.”
“Even if Sharon and Chriso aren’t my birth parents, every child born in most of the tribes has been genetically coded for almost a century.” He nodded patiently. “And even those in rural areas have been added to the database as technology expands.” Minu remembered Cherise telling her that scientists visited her little village of Naobi in her grandmother’s time and scanned all the villagers.
“That is correct.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“Your mother wasn’t in the database so we couldn’t positively identify who she was.” He paused for a moment, so she could digest the information. “Since those few people who aren’t in the database are mostly from small tribes of Rusk or remote villages of the Peninsula tribe, we had to admit failure.”
“So, you don’t know who my mother is?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said and touched the screen. Genetic details with names began to appear, starting with her father, Chriso, and going backward in time.
Father, Minu thought. Yes, he’s still my father. “It was a young researcher on our staff who made the breakthrough. He decided to go back to the original colonists and start there. By starting at the beginning, we could narrow down who your original ancestors might be.”
“You said it was Mindy Harper.”
“Yes, she was. He was just being thorough. Turns out his idea was more fruitful than he thought. He isolated your mother almost immediately.”
“I thought you said he started at the beginning—” She looked at the display. The genetic information was a long chain of letters scrolling against others, lines and lines of ‘GGGAAACCC’ repeating, over and over. Certain key strains were isolated, representing markers and mitochondrial DNA. The strings matched perfectly for a parental comparison. She looked at the name and face floating above the data. “Mindy Harper, founder.”
Minu laughed and looked at Director Porter. He stared back at her without a hint of amusement. “You must be kidding.”
“I don’t joke about some things, Mrs. Groves.” He gestured at the screen floating before them. “To me, history is sacred, and genetic codes holy writ. We are faced with a combination of evidence and scientific proof.”
He touched a control; the genetic details slid to a side screen and images displayed on the main screen. She recognized a half dozen of her ancestors. Her father, his father and mother, their mother, and so on. Each face was placed next to hers and overlaid with hers, then it would dissolve away.
As the images got older, the resemblance quickly became more pronounced. Finally, there was Mindy Harper. When their images merged, they were nearly a perfect match. Minu’s face was narrower, and her nose a little more pronounced. Billy Harper’s image came into the mix. Narrower face, more evident nose.
“Oh my,” she said. Words from her long-gone mother drifted into her mind. She was showing Minu the sapphire necklace she now wore around her neck. “This belonged to the person you owe the most to, Mindy Harper. Yes, Sweetheart, her! You look so much like her, it’s amazing.”
“How?” was all she could say, her vision blurring as tears began to form. Father, what did you do?
“That,” Porter said as he looked at the frozen images of Minu and Mindy side by side, “is something we would dearly like to find out.”
* * * * *
Chapter 10
April 5th, 534 AE
Plateau Historical Society Offices, Tranquility, Bellatrix
Minu left without much fanfare. After getting a copy of the data on chip, she thanked the director for his hard work. He tried to get her to commit to returning sometime soon for further tests, but she told him to contact her assistant and retreated out the door. He watched her go with a sad shake of his head. “I’m sorry. If there is anything I can do, please contact me.”
“I don’t need your fucking pity,” she growled under her breath once she was out of earshot.
She took a cab back to the university and picked up her car. There were several hours left in the workday, but she had other plans. The car lifted off, and she nosed it up and east. In a
minute, she was traveling faster than the speed of sound.
While the autopilot handled the flight, she called Aaron and explained the meeting.
“That can’t be right,” he said.
“I know,” she agreed.
“Could it be some sort of elaborate hoax?”
“I considered it,” she admitted, “which is why I got a copy of the data, and I’m going to see Ted.” She had other reasons than having the genetic data reviewed. “One possibility came to mind.”
“What is that?”
“I could be a clone.”
“A clone? Is that possible?”
“With Concordian technology, I’m sure it is.”
“But wouldn’t you be an exact genetic copy of Mindy? That director guy said you were her daughter.”
“Maybe father used her genetic material and mixed it with mother’s?”
Aaron looked at her through the video display in the dashboard of her aerocar. His expression was full of concern, but also skepticism. She admitted to herself that her theory sounded weak. “You want me to hop over there too?”
“No, you have to finish the delivery schedules by tonight. If anything else weird happens, I’ll call.”
“Define weird.”
“Weirder than normal?” He chuckled and signed off.
Minu stared at the blank screen, thinking, then took out her personal tablet. From a pocket, she removed a small, armored data chip case. The chip was unmarked, and the read-only tab was broken.
She inserted the chip into the tablet and accessed the files. Her father’s extensive notes and mission logs were at her fingertips. By the time the autopilot chirped to warn her of her approaching destination, she had her answer. For two weeks around her birthdate, Chriso had been off-world. The logs detailed a series of missions deep into the frontier, nothing unusual or out of the ordinary.
She released the autopilot and began to descend. The Steven’s Pass complex appeared through the cloud deck. Steven’s Pass was far enough north that even in April there were still spots of snow here and there. Still, she donned her floppy hat as she descended from the aerocar to the roof of the parking lot. The cool breeze across the parking lot roof felt good.