by Sharon Webb
EarthChild
Sharon Webb
For Bryan
And for Mother and Daddy
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their technical assistance: Isaac Asimov, Jeff Duntemann, Steve Nesheim, Mike Rogers, George Scithers, R.J. Thompson, Bryan Webb, Tracey Webb, and Jane Yolen. Any errors are solely my own.
I would further like to thank the friends and family members who offered me encouragement and support as I wrote this book.
SHARON WEBB
genius (jn'yas) n. Exceptional intellectual and creative power. A talent or inclination. Mythology, Roman. A guardian spirit or deity allotted to a person from birth. Mythology, Moslem. A jinni or demon. [Latin genius, deity of generation and birth. See gene] Greek suffix -gens, "-born": -GEN, -GENY.
Suffixed full-grade form gen-yo in: a. Latin genius, procreative divinity, inborn tutelary spirit, innate quality. . . .
Zero-grade form gn- in Sanskrit ja- in Krmi-ja-, "produced by worms…"
PART ONE
Mouat-Gari Year One
Chapter 1
Children. Long lines of children in the gray dawn. Soldiers silhouetted in the mist. Barbed wire.
It started on August 1-the day before Kurt Kraus's fifteenth birthday. The day was hot and muggy from the morning's early rain, but a breeze cooled him as he rode. His narrow bike tires shushed through the shallow puddles, echoing the slap and chop of Tampa Bay against its restraining seawall.
The little bike radio picked up the street beacon, "… Swann Avenue. You are now entering Old Hyde Park…" He switched off the receiver and steadied his oboe case with a touch as he veered left, wheeling abruptly back in time. His bike tires jogged unevenly now over the brick-lined street of the restoration.
As he rode past the old-fashioned shops, the smell of fresh hot doughnuts hung in the air. He slowed and eyed the bakery tentatively, but he was late. He didn't have time to stop. Maybe later he would. After rehearsal.
A bell clanged behind him. He swung his bike toward the curb as the bright yellow trolley clacked down its track in the center of the street.
He stopped for a moment, watching as the car paused and discharged several people. Two of them walked toward him, a girl with red braids and a clarinet case and a tall, thin boy about Kurt's age. Late too.
He waved and pedaled on, turning his bike onto the grounds of the old brick junior high school that was now the Wilson Arts Consortium.
He got off under the shade of an ancient live oak and pushed his bike into the lock-slot. When it engaged, he dropped a coin into the machine and pocketed the key he received.
Grabbing his oboe case, he jogged around the building to the side door of the auditorium. He didn't hear music. Hadn't they started?
He darted into the open door. The members of the Tampa Youth Symphony spilled from the stage into the aisles in knots and clumps. No one was warming up-no scales, no arpeggios. Few of the instrument cases had been opened, and Mr. Hernandez was nowhere in sight.
He stopped, clutching his oboe case, staring in puzzlement around him. "What's going on?"
A few heads turned toward him, students from his ninth grade class at Consolidated. A girl holding a silver flute said, "Haven't you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"It was on the news all morning," said an olive-skinned boy.
"Last night, too," said another. "Late. None of us slept after that."
"Imagine," said the first girl. "We've been eating and drinking the stuff, and we didn't even know… And all die time we were changing."
Kurt grabbed the girl's arm. "What are you talking about?"
"You really don't know?" She looked at him in surprise. "I'm talking about the process. The Coalition sent World Health all over the world with it-even out to L-5 Center. And nobody knew."
"That's because of the renegades in Argentina. They got the process too," said an olive-skinned boy. "They gave it to everybody in their country. WorldCo couldn't hold it back when Argentina had it, could they? There'd have been a revolution."
Kurt frowned in annoyance. "Hold what back? What are you talking about?"
The girl's fingers caressed the silver flute. "The process. We're all immortal now."
Her words didn't make any sense to him. "What are you talking about?"
"We're not going to die. We're never going to get old or sick. We're all going to live forever."
"Not all." A young man about twenty turned toward them. His fingers tightened and relaxed over the handle of his violin case. "Not all," he repeated. "It only works on kids." He looked at each of them in turn. "Kids your age. Or younger. Nothing's changed for the rest of us."
Kurt looked at him. The young man's words echoed through his mind. Nothing's changed for the rest of us… The full significance of those words seemed to elude him, and yet there was something wrong with them, something utterly wrong. Because if they were true, then everything had changed.
Slowly, he walked up the steps onto the stage. His mind rejected what he had heard-pushed it aside to be examined later on. He came to his chair and sat down. For a moment, he looked out at the empty seats of the auditorium. The sun shone through the tall windows and sent rectangles of light to play among the shadows. The sun seemed very bright to him, the shadows very dark. He opened the shabby black case, stuck his reed into a little tube of water, and began to fit his oboe together.
He examined the music set out on his stand-Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite, Sucharitkul's Rebirth. He placed his reed and began to warm up.
The door clanged open at the rear of the auditorium and rumbled shut. Jorge Luis Hernandez walked down the center aisle clutching his briefcase. At the sight of him, the knots and clumps of players dissolved and moved toward the stage. Instrument cases snapped open, shut.
Hernandez stepped to the podium, opened his case, and removed a stack of music. He spoke to no one. As the orchestra began to warm up, he riffled through a score, set it aside, and opened another. He stared at it, his head bent over the music. Broad fingers slicked a wavy mass of thick white hair. He stood like this for some time, then he tapped three times with his baton. Kurt sounded an A and the musicians began to tune.
When they had finished, Hernandez shifted slightly. A silence came. Seventy pairs of eyes stared at him. Fingers touched wooden bows and silver keys. He spoke at last, his soft accented voice carrying over the hush. "These day… These day is one to be always remembered." He looked from one to another of the young musicians. Sunlight glistened on the moisture in his dark eyes. "We will play the Rebirth now. We will listen to what it tells us."
He lifted his baton. It m
oved. Concentrating, Kurt began to play the opening solo. The haunting notes of his oboe hung in the warm air. String basses and ‘cellos began to throb below his song in almost imperceptible accompaniment. A flute conjoined, and then a muted brass choir. Gradually the sound grew and swelled into a celebration, an exultation of life.
Then it was over. Jorge Luis Hernandez stood for a long moment with his head bowed. When he raised it, a bright tear traced down his face. "Thank you." He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Who will conduct you in a hundred years? In two? You will be magnificent." His hands dropped to the score. He closed it and placed his music in the briefcase with hands that trembled. "I cannot go on today."
He turned and walked down the steps and down the center aisle, sunlight glinting on his white hair. At the door he turned and looked at them once again. "Thank you." The wide door clattered in his grasp, and he was gone.
* * *
Kurt stepped out into the blaze of late morning sun. Carrying his oboe case, he walked toward the back of the old building. He wasn't ready to leave yet, to leave the feel of the old part of town. He moved to the shade of a wide live oak and sat on a cracked concrete bench below it. Dark roots ran through gray dirt. A sprig of grass struggled at the edge of the bench.
Three little girls skipped rope on an empty tennis court. The rope snapped its rhythm in counterpoint to the thud of small feet,
"O-ver, o-ver. Evie-ivy o-ver. O-ver, o-ver. Evie-ivy un-der."
The game broke up when one was called to lunch. Two of the children headed arm-in-arm across the court. The other, proprietor of the jump rope, swung it in a lazy loop over her shoulder and walked toward the alley that led to the front of the building.
He stood up then and picked up his case. In the distance, the little girl stood looking at something on the ground in the alleyway. As he drew closer, he saw what it was. In the rippling shadows a large toad sat half-in, half-out of a shallow puddle. It had a piece of bread in its mouth, scavenged from someone's cast-off sandwich. Its mouth stretched comically over the bread. The little girl grinned.
Ahead, a truck rumbled into the alley. It sped up suddenly and she jumped back in alarm. Just as suddenly, it stopped. Inside, two young men looked out at the child.
"Watch out," she said. "You'll squash him."
One of the men spotted the toad and pointed. The truck began to move slowly toward the puddle, toward the toad.
"Don't. No, don't!"
The wheels rolled over the fat body of the toad, stopped, rolled back, rolled forward again.
The little girl's hands curled into fists. Shock glazed her eyes. "He wanted to live," she said. "He did. He wanted to live."
The truck rolled back and forth, back and forth again, flattening the body of the toad into the damp earth. The two men laughed a long time before they drove away.
* * *
He had never thought about the inevitability of his death before except in the most abstract of ways. He thought about it now-now that it would never happen. The hot sun drenched his skin with warm sweat and tightened his dark hair into thick tousled curls.
He looked at his hands, wide fingers gripping the handlebars of his bike. They would always look that way, he thought. Maybe bigger, as he grew, but always strong and brown from the sun.
Always. He tried to understand it. He had lived for fifteen years; he would live always. In the sun. But suns died. They lived and died, didn't they? They blew up and burned out. The whole universe was going to die.
It made him uneasy thinking about forever. It somehow shrank him to a speck. He pushed that part away, that big incomprehensible part of always, and substituted something manageable-he would live for a hundred years. And after that he would live for another hundred.
The blare of a horn startled him. A huge food transport was nearly on top of him. He was in the wrong lane! He darted to the right. The transport cleared him by mere centimeters.
How could he have been so stupid? He hadn't paid attention at all. Heart pounding, he veered quickly into the bike lanes as a red and silver bubble bike sped past.
He could have been killed. He considered the thought. He could be squashed, mangled, cut up, shot. It was shocking. Someone who could live forever-longer than the sun-and never age could be snuffed out in an instant by a transport. Smashed flat like a toad under a wheel.
He paid attention after that, guiding his bike carefully along the wide boulevard. The hot sun glittered on the bay, but his sweat felt cold against his skin.
* * *
TampaTran disgorged a clot of passengers as he pushed his bike into his lock-slot. He looked up anxiously, scanning the group, looking for his parents. The passengers dispersed and spread by twos and threes toward the cluster of buildings.
He felt relieved that he hadn't seen them, and he felt a little ashamed to be relieved. But he wasn't ready yet. Not yet.
He pressed his card against the door scan and went in, pressing it again to summon the elevator. They were still probably at the hospital. The treatments took a long time.
He felt the familiar tightening in his stomach when he thought of his father-the hateful combination of pity and love and helplessness. Now, nearly every morning showed a change. He could sense the tumor growing when he saw the lines of his facial bones protrude as the flesh fell away. His father-his monument-Richard Kraus. Now he spent his evenings at bars or drinking quietly in his study. He spent his nights with the red narcotic medeject that squatted on the night table, and when the narcotics failed, with shadowy walks through the darkened streets. His father.
It wasn't fair. Tears swam up in his eyes, and he blinked them away. He wanted to see him, wanted to talk about today and what it meant. But not just yet. Not yet.
The econdo was empty. It was warm inside, unpleasantly so. He jabbed absently at the summerstat as he always did, but it resisted his touch. His mother had locked it at 25 degrees. Next summer when the Ruskin fusion plant opened, he intended to set the stat at two below icicle.
A tail thumped in welcome. Committee stretched and grinned his most charming doggie grin. Kurt rubbed the shaggy little head, and then, stricken with hunger, went into the kitchen. Committee, sensing a possible handout, trotted alongside.
He rummaged through the cabinet in search of nourishment and settled on a family-sized packet of stew. He pulled a bowl from the dispenser, clattered it full of stew pellets and stuck it into the bubbler. While he waited, he pawed in the drawer for a spoon and finished off half a liter of chocolate ice cream. The hairy aggregate, Committee, thumped his tail and was rewarded with the dripping remains.
The bubbler buzzed. Kurt extracted the stew and devoured it, washing it down with two glasses of milk. He tossed the empty bowl and glass in the recycler and deposited his dirty spoon in the sink. Committee plopped down on the floor and licked h
is paws. Kurt looked at him curiously. Did it work on dogs? Committee was only ten months old- not full grown yet. Maybe it worked on dogs too.
He went into the living room and keyed the computer for IMMORTALITY. He watched in dismay at the volume of flexi-sheets that poured out of the machine and fluttered to the floor. He'd never be able to read that much. Punching the OFF button, he gathered up the heap and thumbed through it, pushing discarded sheets into the recycle slot.
.…THE RENEGADE BAND, LA SESENTA, DISSEMINATED THE MOUAT-GARI IMMORTALITY PROCESS TO THE MILLIONS OF ARGENTINA. FEARING WHOLESALE INSURRECTION, THE WORLD COALITION EMPOWERED THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TO ALTER THE PEOPLE'S FOOD AND WATER SUPPLIES…
…INEFFECTIVE IN ADULTS. THE MOUAT-GARI PROCESS IS EFFECTIVE IN ALL CHILDREN UNTIL BODY TISSUES INCLUDING LYMPHOID, NEURAL, REPRODUCTIVE AND BONE REACH 94.2% OF ADULT NORMAL AT THE AVERAGE AGE OF 16.9 YEARS IN MALES, SOMEWHAT EARLIER IN FEMALES. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS OF ± .9 YEARS ARE COMMON…
.…PROCESS INSURES PERFECT REPLICATION OF DNA IN THE BODY'S CELLS. THIS COMBINED WITH THE INHIBITION OF THE INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE CAUSES THE BODY TO RESIST INFECTION. INVASION BY BACTERIA AND VIRUSES STILL OCCUR, BUT THE BODY IN EFFECT IGNORES THESE AGENTS…
He pushed another handful of sheets into the recycle slot, but still there were more:
.…EXCEPTION OF TRAUMA AND CERTAIN POISONS. SOME METABOLIC AND GENETIC DISEASE PROCESSES WILL PROGRESS WITH FATAL RESULT IN SPITE OF THE AGE OF THE CHILD…