Gods of the Greataway

by Coney, Michael G.

  It is sometimes said that the Macrobes spread through the human race like wildfire, but this is not so. In fact, the process was gradual and accompanied by setbacks, such as the infamous Pogrom of the Hosts, when many millions of Macrobe-carrying humans were wiped out by enemies jealous of their longevity.

  The chief characteristic of the Macrobes was their intense desire to live. Because of this, they made sure their host lived, too. However, incidents such as the Pogrom caused them to revise their tactics. They evolved into a recessive gene and lay low for thousands of years.

  *

  “It was a paradox,” said Shenshi. “Once the Pogrom was over and it became clear that the Macrobes still existed — and would always exist — Mankind began to accept them as beneficial. After all, they could extend the life of a man for several hundred years. What could be better?”

  “So what was the paradox?” asked Ana.

  “Humans lost all incentive. The drive and urgency went out of them. What was the hurry, when suddenly they had a life-span of centuries to play with? They called it the Age of Regression, when people began to drift back into their Domes for entertainment. They lay down and plugged themselves into Dream Earth, and there they stayed.”

  “I remember that happening,” said Ana. “It was quite a gradual thing. Then one day I realized there were two types of humans: the people in the Domes, and the Wild Humans outside.”

  Shenshi said, “The people in the Domes were the ones with Macrobes, of course. And now the Macrobes were trapped, because human reproduction had virtually ceased. The beginnings of neoteny had been observed in the Dome people, and the Cuidadors had set up an experimental station on another planet, well away from Earthly influences, where they were trying to breed humans with normal characteristics. They called it the People Planet, and it was founded in 107,357 Cyclic.

  “The Cuidadors began to take an interest in the Wild Humans, seeking suitable breeding stock. And the Macrobes realized they must obtain a foothold on the People Planet and in the breeding program if they were to survive.

  “And I scanned the Ifalong, and foresaw a happentrack on which Starquin was freed from his imprisonment. So I sent you into Puerto Este …”

  “I remember that day,” said Ana thoughtfully. “And the boy — Antonio, was it? He was a nice boy.” She smiled reminiscently.

  “The recessive gene had surfaced in him.”

  “You make it sound so clinical, Mother. Does there always have to be a reason for niceness?”

  “Always,” said Shenshi.

  *

  She was a foreign girl; he could tell that by her complexion. She was paler than the local girls, and her features more delicate. She had arrived some months ago and had set up a little shop in an old stone cottage near the beach. Her name was foreign, too — a curious name, at first lumpy on his tongue like clotted uida, but soon gaining a poetry and a meaning of its own.

  He watched her each morning as she walked to the beach in the early sun, picking her way over the pebbles as though they were hot coals — she was not yet accustomed to going barefoot — then striding across the sand toward the water with her head high, never glancing his way as he lay beside a grass-tipped dune. Each day he moved a little closer to her accustomed route, but still she didn’t look at him. Chin up, eyes ahead, she moved with a swing of rhythmic poetry in her strong thighs and her slender waist. After a week she was tanned, but it was a golden tan, and in the boy’s eyes the local girls with their dark skins looked merely dirty beside her. They taunted him, too, suspecting his enchantment.

  “You’re too young for her, Antonio! You’re only a child!”

  Possibly she was two years older than he, but he was at that age — or maybe was that type of person — to dismiss this as irrelevant. She was a beautiful creature and he loved her, but he’d never spoken to her, and perhaps he never would. Unless that occasion arose which he often dreamed of, when he heard her screaming from the surf in danger of her life, and he swam out and saved her. Then she would thank him, clinging to him, and he would say with mature casualness, “It was nothing. You’re shivering. Come along to my place and I’ll make you a hot drink.”

  Antonio’s place was a stone cottage like all the other stone cottages, thick-walled and cool in summer, warm in winter when he covered the windows and stacked the fire high. It contained a bed fashioned from driftwood, a chair and table of similar construction, a few metal pots left by the previous owner, some simple tools, a pile of vicuna skins (on which she would lie, her shivering abating, her eyes warm as she watched him heat a potion of milk, ground coffee beans and peyote) and Antonio’s prized possession, a shelf of books. Many years ago Antonio, an introverted child, had taught himself to read from a cache of books he’d found in a buried village. Not many people in Puerto Este could boast of this accomplishment.

  Or his other accomplishment, about which he had never told anyone …

  The interior walls of the cottage were worn smooth with the occupancy of millennia. The cracks held little curios — bits of beach-worn glass, shells, unidentifiable artifacts from long ago. The surface of many larger stones bore carvings of stylized fish and whales, goats and guanacos. And one stone, near the fireplace, bore an etched symbol. Probably no one in the village except Antonio knew what it meant.

  Under the symbol was a shelf, and on the shelf sat a pot of flowers. On a rock projecting from the wall below the flowers lay a piece of white bark, with characters inscribed on it with a charred stick. Antonio was writing a poem.

  He’d never written a poem before, although he had a book of poems that he frequently read, feeling strange stirrings within him at their rhythms, sounds and emotions. So it seemed appropriate that he write the girl a poem. It was taking a long time, although it was a short poem. The bark was smudged from many erasures. In a few days it would be finished, even though Antonio felt there was an infinity of ways in which the choice and setting of words could be improved.

  It had to be finished soon, because Antonio had seen Hernando, a much older boy, muscled and swarthy and strong, talking to the girl yesterday. So — in a couple of days he would give her the poem and she would melt in his arms, just as if he’d saved her life. He selected a charred stick from the fireplace and began to edit, to perfect.

  He wondered why things should be so complicated, here in the simple surroundings of Puerto Este. In his books he’d read of other times when the world teemed with people, clustered in large cities in their millions, when even in the countryside every available hectare was cultivated. Strange social structures had held sway, and complex laws that were altered many times in a lifetime. How could a person keep up, in those far-off days? How could one handle differing currencies, differing languages, different customs as he rushed from one city to another? And the laws … How could one stay out of jail?

  Things were so much simpler here and now. The mountains, the village, the sea. The sun and the sand. And the girl …

  No, it was not simple. Man could still create complications within his own mind. Otherwise he would have walked right up to the girl and said, “You are beautiful and I love you. Come and live with me in my cottage …” Now that was simple. That was real poetry.

  Love can be pain. Antonio endured the pain because it was outweighed by the joy. And in a very short time, he had finished the poem as best he could. It was not perfect and it didn’t rhyme, and in a way it contradicted itself by denying the need for its own existence. Yet its uncomplicated statement found its way into history.

  But love should be a simple thing

  Of silence, with no need to justify.

  No honest reason to write down

  Neat unities of charcoal, bark and mind,

  Instead of simply trusting in

  Emotions you read better from my eyes.

  And the girl was tanned and straight, with hair the color of a fair sunset and she stepped delicately over the pebbles, although her feet were now becoming accustomed to the ro
ugh ground. Now she was on the sand, wearing two pieces of bright dyed leather, walking to the waves, toward the dune where Antonio lolled with seeming indifference. She didn’t glance at him yet. She didn’t glance at the little knot of spectators who leaned on a broken groyne nearby, either. These were Antonio’s contemporaries, who suspected he was about to make a fool of himself and wanted to see it happen.

  The girl’s feet were small, and she left a straight trail of small footprints behind her. If that line of footprints were extended from the moving girl toward the water, they would pass directly over a low dune. To the right of this knoll lay a piece of bark, paper-thin, about the size of a man’s chest. To the left of the knoll lounged Antonio, trying to hear the sound of the girl’s approach above the pounding of his heart. The girl would turn right, he knew, choosing not to climb the knoll and choosing not to walk too close to where he lay. So she would see the poem, right in front of her. Antonio, lay propped up on one elbow, hearing his heart and the murmur of surf. Suddenly, hearing a tiny click as two stones met, disturbed by the girl’s passing.

  A shadow fell across the dune. She was here. The shadow shifted. She was turning right, around the base of the dune. Antonio gulped as his throat misbehaved. His fingers traced an endless pattern in the sand. Love should be a simple thing.

  “Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!” The spectators at the groyne, wickedly knowing, set up a chant.

  The girl had paused. Antonio risked a sideways glance from under his hair. She was looking at the bark at her feet. Now another figure appeared, walking diagonally across the beach. A slow geometry of disaster.

  The girl had picked up the bark. She was staring at the scrawlings.

  “Hello!” The muscular figure, Hernando, strode toward her. “Coming for a swim?”

  She looked up, saw him, then looked back at the bark. Her gaze slid almost to Antonio; her eyes were puzzled. Again she looked at the bark, then shrugged and cast it aside. It fell to the sand waveringly, like a falling leaf. Now she looked at Hernando again, and smiled.

  “Coming!” she called and ran toward him. He took her hand and, laughing, they ran together into the waves.

  Just two more things happened.

  Antonio watched them go, then he stood, brushing the sand from his thighs. He turned around and looked back at the cottages, with the mountains in the distance, and, nearer, the giggling group at the groyne. His emotions surrounded him like a cold mist. He thought for a moment, fought himself, then, unable to bear the pain any longer, reached down into his being, into some core of awareness deep inside him.

  Help me, Little People, please help me!

  Help?

  Make me happy, now. I do not want to love.

  They saw him standing like a rock; then they saw him relax and smile. He gave a little skip and turned, saw them and ran toward them, his heels throwing up puffs of sand. Now he was a carefree boy; he had cast love off like a hermit crab casting off an old shell that had become too confining. Laughing, he joined them at the groyne, shadowboxing, suggesting games. A couple of them became quiet, eyed him curiously, and continued to observe him covertly for the rest of the day. Antonio was a strange fellow. Unpredictable.

  *

  “He was a nice boy,” said Ana again, remembering. “Why wouldn’t you let me talk to him?”

  “He had to be hurt, and I had to observe his reaction. It was a test. Love used to be a very powerful driving force in humans, and Antonio had love. Not many humans did, by that time. That’s one of the reasons they lost the knack of Greataway travel. But Antonio was exceptional, and I had to know if the Macrobe gene was strong enough to defeat his love for you.”

  Ana said sadly, “He never really looked at me, after that.”

  “His Macrobes knew he could destroy himself for love of you. You were a very beautiful woman in those days,” said Shenshi dispassionately.

  “Some men think I’m not too bad right now,” said Ana, annoyed.

  “One thing I never knew. Why did you choose that name? What was wrong with your own name?”

  “I didn’t like what I was doing, Mother. I suppose I didn’t want to associate my name with it.”

  “But why that particular name? It’s not from this region.”

  “Bonnie? It’s an old human legend I got from a terminal of the Rainbow. Bonnie was a cow with a human mind, and a man called Adam fell in love with her. I think the story was intended to mean that human love and sex weren’t the same thing. Bonnie seemed an appropriate name, so I used it. Did you notice how Antonio’s poem spelled it out?” Ana smiled.

  “It will be a good thing when you lose your human emotions, Ana. Remember, you only have them because I gave them to you as a disguise while you live among these creatures. You will not have them much longer.”

  “Perhaps that will be my loss.”

  “When you reach my age, you won’t even remember those emotions. However, young Antonio had them in full measure, and this was recognized by the Cuidadors. They came from the Dome and took him, and shipped him up to their People Planet. He was a perfect specimen from their point of view. He had love — so essential for their Greataway travel. Physically, he was acceptable.

  “And most important, the Macrobes were in his genes. So they gained their foothold in the breeding program — unknown to the Cuidadors.”

  Ana said thoughtfully, “I haven’t noticed much difference around Pu’este in the last thirty-five thousand years. The Wild Humans are still out here, looking more like barrels every generation. And the Domes … All I know about them is what Zozula tells me occasionally. I haven’t heard of any big changes over the millennia. So what have the Macrobes done lately?”

  “They haven’t been very successful on the People Planet. Although they have a collective intelligence, their sense of self-preservation can lead them into mistakes. They started by neutralizing the human genes that cause ageing, thinking this would insure their survival. Maybe it will, but since their hosts never reach puberty, they cannot reproduce. A thousand of these creatures were produced before the True Humans realized something was wrong. They were placed in isolation in a corner of the People Planet, and as far as I can foretell, they will remain there until the sun goes nova. The Cuidadors call them the Everlings.”

  “Poor things.”

  “They were the Macrobes’ first mistake,” said Shenshi. “But the Everlings were of little consequence, compared to what the Macrobes did next …”

  THE LOST NEOTENITE

  Selena was carrying a memory potto on her shoulder, and the sight of it saddened Zozula, reminding him that the Cuidadors were getting older and having to rely on more and more artificial devices to carry out their jobs. The little primate stared at him with its huge eyes, seeing everything, hearing everything, remembering everything. It was telepathic, too, and whenever it sensed that Selena was groping to recall some fact or incident from the past, it would feed the memory to her as if it were her own. Selena was rarely without her memory potto, these days.

  She saw Zozula looking at it. “There’s so much to remember, up on the People Planet,” she said defensively. “The display screens shift so fast … I don’t have time to take it all in.”

  They sat around a table in the Rainbow Room. The atmosphere was gloomy. The search for True Humans in the ocean had failed, and meanwhile another seven neotenites had died.

  “I’ve asked your man Brutus to make sure the nurses replace all sick neotenites immediately,” Zozula said, and before Selena could object, he continued, “I’m aware that the recent deaths seem to be due to some kind of mental problem, but I want to make sure we’re covering all angles. Brutus tells me there are thirty-four standby bodies in storage, and I told him to use them all.”

  “That doesn’t allow us any spares for emergencies,” said Selena, white-faced.

  “You’ll have to ship in replacements from the People Planet.”

  “They’re not old enough! The rules state they have to be a
t least six months old before they’re brought to Earth.”

  “We made the rules, Selena,” said Zozula gently. “We can change them.”

  Meanwhile, Manuel, listening to the argument with half his mind, was watching the Girl on the other side of the Rainbow Room. She sat at the console, renewing her acquaintanceship with Dream Earth. A prehistoric scene was enacting itself under the vaulting roof of the room. A herd of mastodons strode in stately line along a valley bottom, and Caradoc sat on a rock nearby, bringing the Girl up to date on recent happenings. The Girl looked terribly vulnerable, a mountain of delicate flesh sitting beneath the stamping feet of the mastodons, albeit in another dimension.

  She had been very kind to Manuel since the death of Belinda. Kind and sympathetic, and sad. In her present form, she thought, no young man would fall in love with her. (She had never heard the legend of Bonnie and Adam.)

  Manuel, looking at her, experienced a rush of pity that made him forget his own sorrow. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said suddenly. “We’ve got to find out what caused neoteny in the first place. If we can do that, we might be able to discover a cure — or the Rainbow might discover it for us. It could be something quite simple, some little thing lost in history. But people didn’t always have bodies like that,” he pointed at the distant Girl. “Something caused it. So it can be reversed. But instead of getting to the bottom of the problem, we’ve been wasting our time running around looking for ready-made True Humans.” Aware that he had been making a speech, he fell silent, abashed.

  Selena said, “Neoteny happened over a long period of time.”

  “But it must have had a beginning,” said Manuel.

  “What I mean is, there’s probably no cure. Humans simply changed, gradually, because they were in the Domes. It happens to animals, when you take the element of threat out of their environment. Juvenile characteristics are retained in the adult form — things like big eyes, high brows, plump cheeks and small noses.”