IN THE PAST two weeks, the marsupial wolf had unexpectedly grown quite large, to the point where its body was the size of a small horse, but to Artie it looked even bigger than that, because of the batlike wings it flexed and extended frequently, even when not flying. The rate of growth this creature had exhibited was astonishing to Artie and his robotic assistants, and he wondered to himself if it had something to do with the educated guesses and assumptions he’d made when growing the animal in the laboratory. The quarter of one percent he had secretly added to the genetic mix.
The skeletal remains of its extinct ancestor that had been found on Lord Howe Island near Australia were considerably smaller, leading to unanswered questions. So far, the hubot had fended them off by saying that one individual skeleton might not fairly represent the species. He was controlling the dissemination of information, and certain details didn’t make it into the reports that he passed on to Chairman Rahma.
The glidewolf’s appetite for eucalyptus seemed insatiable, and many of the trees in the habitat showed evidence of this, with stripped leaves and bark and bare, scarred branches, as well as missing branches that the creature had ripped apart and chewed into pulp that it could swallow. The sharpness of the creatures’ claws and teeth gave Artie considerable pause, not out of concern for his own safety (because he was a hubot), but out of concern for humans that could be injured by them, or worse. Still, the animal was supposed to be herbivorous, not carnivorous.
It was evening, and Artie stood near the tree where the creature nested on a large lower branch. He watched her as she watched him, her pale yellow eyes glinting in the low light of the habitat. “You’re not a meat eater, are you?” Artie said aloud.
As if in response, the glidewolf stirred from her nest and descended the trunk of the tree headfirst, keeping her wings folded over her body. Reaching the ground, she walked toward Artie on all fours. Her actions seemed peculiar to him, indeed, because she had never done this before, but Artie held his ground, unafraid. Except for his eyes, he only had artificial skin that could be repaired or replaced, so if necessary he would put his body on the line for the sake of science. He looked human, even had human scents, mannerisms, and other characteristics built into his body, so whatever happened next could be an indication of what the glidewolf might do to a real person.
Reaching Artie, the glidewolf rose up on her haunches, so that she stood more than a head taller than the hubot, in an apparent fighting posture with her forepaws and sharp claws up. She looked down at him with those pale, eerie eyes. It concerned him that the eyes were cold and alien, suggesting a lack of empathy. Her teeth and claws could rip him apart. He reminded himself that he wasn’t human for the most part, and he could be repaired if necessary. Even his human eyes could be made to function again if they were damaged, with modern medical techniques.
Fur on the glidewolf’s chest pouch rippled a little, and the pouch opened at the top, which was at Artie’s face level. The hubot leaned forward to look inside, but saw only darkness.
The pouch opened a bit more, as if in invitation. Artie looked up at the glidewolf’s face, seeing the long snout, the mysterious eyes, and the sharp teeth, and feeling very small and powerless himself. Yet Artie had been programmed with the emotions and mannerisms of Glanno Artindale, along with elements of the hero’s bravery and his intelligent, scientific curiosity.
Tentatively, the hubot touched the top edge of the pouch and felt it give way and loosen with only a slight amount of pressure from him, as if he and the wolf were of one mind, with the same goal. Now the animal leaned forward slightly to make it easier for Artie, and he climbed inside feetfirst, with his head sticking out of the pouch and his hands holding on to the rough edge. The pouch tightened comfortably around him.
Abruptly the glidewolf turned and scampered up the tree, with Artie holding on. As the hubot watched in amazement, this time as a participant instead of viewing it through a camera feed, the marsupial leaped from a high point and extended her wings, gliding to the top of another eucalyptus tree. Again it leaped, and again it glided, circling around the dimly lit airspace between the treetops and the techplex ceiling of the habitat and then using her clawed feet to grab hold of the vertical trellis that led up to the ingress and egress hatch.
Quickly the wolf scampered up the trellis, nudged open the hatch, and exited the enclosure into the night. Then, without even climbing a tree, she lifted her wings and picked up a strong breeze that enabled the creature and her humanoid passenger to soar upward into the night sky, over the game reserve.
With his simulated senses, Artie felt the coolness of the night air against his face, and with his programmed emotions he also felt exhilaration. To the west he saw the buildings of Chairman Rahma’s headquarters compound, as well as the Shrine of Martyrs, the aviaries, and the vaulted greenhouses—all dimly lit—and also the large, oval-shaped rooftop of the subterranean network of extinct animal habitats, glittering with illumination as if it were a decorative pond.
Upward the glidewolf soared into the starlit darkness, finding one air current and then shifting to another, gliding expertly this way and that, as if cavorting in the night sky. Then, gradually, she circled and returned to the ground near the ingress-egress hatch. There in the illumination she hesitated for a moment, looking down at Artie with eyes that had become noticeably larger during the flight, evidence of the nocturnal side of the creature, an aspect that seemed to come and go, because she was so often energetic in the daytime as well as the nighttime.
The marsupial opened the hatch with one sharp claw, climbed inside, and descended the trellis headfirst, facing vertically downward. For a moment, Artie thought he would fall out of the pouch, but it tightened comfortably around him during the descent, so he hardly had to hold on (though he did anyway).
When it was over and Artie found himself back in his laboratory office, he reviewed the information he had just accumulated in his data banks. It was fascinating! Then on a screen he watched the glidewolf on a tree branch, scraping bark free and chewing it. The creature had a voracious appetite, and seemed to grow visibly larger as it fed. He wondered how much bigger it would get.
20
Though most of us deny being religious, the GSA contains a pantheon of progressivism, a group of gods or saints, or whatever you choose to call them. In our eyes, they can do no wrong. We call them the Berkeley Eight, and they are an integral part of the myth structure that Chairman Rahma Popal created in order to sustain his government. Did he do this for altruistic reasons, to benefit the planet, or with another motivation in mind? That is another question, isn’t it?
—Unanswered Questions for Chairman Rahma, a banned book
KUPI AND JOSS’S crew stood at a hospital viewing window, peering into the room where he lay in a coma, breathing slowly and regularly. For nine days he had not moved, with the exception of the slight and regular motion of his chest as he breathed, and the intermittent fluttering of his lips as air passed across them. He was on his back with his head propped up slightly by a pillow, and intravenous lines connected.
It was early evening. Kupi Landau and her companions had just arrived by high-speed train from the Southwest Territory, where they had been assigned to work temporarily with another greenformer until Joss recovered. Kupi and her co-workers had been here three times since the explosion, and this was the first occasion they’d seen Joss’s cop roommate, Andruw Twitty, in the viewing area. He wore street clothes.
Two doctors were in the room now, using instruments to run tests on the patient. Kupi pressed against the clearplex to see better. Joss had only an uncle still living in his family, so his friends had been given permission to visit him—but they could get no closer than this. As everyone could see from the light carbon color of Joss’s skin and the forest green, vinelike scars that wound around his body, he was no ordinary patient.
The hospital room was soundproof, so Kupi could not hear what the doctors were saying to each other, but they looked perplexed. One of the
m shrugged, while the other typed notes on a data pad.
Just a few minutes ago, a nurse had entered the viewing area and told Kupi that Joss had no internal bleeding and no apparent hemorrhage in the brain. Miraculously, he was healing rapidly from what seemed to be superficial injuries, but the doctors could not explain his appearance or bring him out of the coma. They’d been trying different things, and performing a battery of tests.
The nurse had struggled for words. “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I’ve been informed that all of you are close to him, so I’ll tell you what I can. Joss’s cellular and chemical makeup have … changed dramatically. You can see his skin, and it isn’t just the appearance. Tests reveal that he’s a hybrid—part human, part plant, and part something else.”
Alarmed, Kupi had asked, “What do you mean?”
“In the explosion he was infused with the DNA and cellular structures of trees and other plants that are native to the Berkeley area, along with something else that we can’t identify.”
“Why does his skin look like that?” Twitty had asked. Kupi had noticed a flatness in his tone, more coldness than usual. He seemed unconcerned, but curious. In contrast, Joss’s crew was worried about whether or not he would survive, and whether he would ever return to consciousness.
“We don’t know.” The nurse had seemed to dislike Twitty, and she’d left soon afterward without saying much more.
Now Kupi glanced dispassionately at the young eco-cop, and caught his nervous gaze before it flitted away. No one on the crew was saying much to him at all, leaving him off to one side by himself.
He appeared ill at ease, said, “I can tell that none of you like me, and I want you to know that I don’t care.”
“We don’t care that you don’t care,” said the stout, aging mechanic, Sabe McCarthy. He was the shortest of the crew, and glared over at Twitty. They were about the same height.
In recent months Joss had complained to her about his roommate, saying he suspected he was collecting information to report to higher-ups, and not only about Joss but about Kupi as well. Having met Twitty before, she had no doubt of that. He had a peculiar, sneaky way of behaving around her, of sliding around the edges of a room and trying to look at her when he didn’t think she was looking.
He was doing that now, darting gazes toward her and then looking away quickly.
Kupi didn’t want to be around him anymore, and needed a break from the whole sad situation. She glanced at the black chrono implanted in her wrist, then whirled and left, with the rest of the crew close behind her.
21
What do we perceive, or think we know?
By these measures we make our way through life, probing for pathways.
But where do they lead us?
—Chairman Rahma Popal, private files
AT FIRST HE felt a sensual awareness coursing through his veins, like sweet rainwater passing through capillaries in the trunk of a great tree, nurturing even the topmost portions of the plant and enabling it to stretch toward the heavens. He moved the fingers of one hand, and oddly they seemed like little branches with leaves on them, moving ever so slightly to absorb more of the nutrients of the sun, like a process of photosynthesis that was necessary to generate chemical reactions and drive the green engine of a plant.
His thoughts seemed frighteningly alien to him, and he had a dawning impression that much of his corporeal structure was nothing familiar, nothing he’d ever imagined could be possible. And yet he retained links to things he knew, things he had learned and experienced.
I have fingers. More than three words, this was a thought, accompanied by visual memories.
He felt warmth on those fingers. From sunlight? It was a certain kind of warmth, seemingly natural.
And eyes. I have eyes. As the fingers warmed, he opened his eyes and struggled to look in that direction. But his vision was fogged.
More awareness seeped into his mind. In memory he envisioned an entire human body, remembered moving about in one, spending a lifetime with it. But details were indistinct and disjointed, didn’t have significance to him.
Other senses penetrated his consciousness, guided it. He realized now that he was lying on something soft, like feathers piled on the duff of a forest floor. But it did not smell like a forest (had a faint antiseptic scent instead), and when he touched the surface with his fingers, it didn’t feel like decaying organic materials. He heard distant sounds, couldn’t determine what they were, but got the distinct impression that they represented something intrusive and dangerous.
Animals. They intend to harm me!
With a great effort he moved his entire body, and suddenly he felt himself falling, tumbling, finally landing with a hard thud that sent a shudder coursing through his body, along with a dull awareness of pain. Awkwardly, he found a way to rise and stand, and had the distinct sensation that he was something quite different from other life-forms, alone and separated from any known type of organism.
He squinted in bright light, felt like a newborn, but with a twist. I am the first of my kind, the only one of my kind.
The creature felt confined by his remaining, hybridized humanness, the musculature assembly that fought his efforts to direct it. But to survive he needed to coordinate the cells, the connective tissue of that body, that form with all of its corporal limitations. He needed to move within its confines, and understand what lay beyond.
I must protect myself against animals … human animals.
His eyes became more accustomed to the light, and through a haze he saw a room, and a bed he must be lying upon. A hospital room, he decided, noting intravenous lines that he had torn loose, and which dangled from a stand. He felt where they had been connected to his arms, slight, prickling sensations of pain on rough skin surfaces, and noticed that he wore a thin gown, open at the back.
Menacing human shapes became apparent through the haze. People were watching him, speaking about him in urgent tones. The creature knew that he should understand their words, but he could not, no matter how hard he tried. There were significant gaps preventing comprehension, gaps that stretched across an abyss from his human past to whatever he was now.
He became aware of clearplex windows on one perimeter of the room, and of sunlight streaming in, splashing warmth over him and making him feel just a little better. There were interior viewing windows as well, where a man stood looking at him, observing, collecting information.
The creature began to understand some of the words spoken by others. They were uttered by nurses and doctors, but not by the man behind the viewing window, who seemed apart from them, and a quiet threat.
Abruptly his own name came back, floating on currents of memory: I am Joss Stuart. I am a greenformer and commander of a J-Mac crew; I live in the Seattle Reservation for Humans.
These memories and realizations were links to a past that he knew could never exist for him again. Everything was changed now.
Shapes moved toward Joss, doctors and nurses with instruments to sedate him and get him under their control. He could not allow that, and backed away from them, knocking over a rolling table. His ears detected a faint roar, as from far away. It grew louder by the moment.
Their voices were urgent, and strong fingers gripped Joss’s arm. “I’ve got him!” a man shouted. “Get over here and help me!”
Joss pulled free and kicked the man with a bare foot, causing him to tumble over a chair and shout curses.
“Grab his arms!” a woman shouted.
But Joss whirled away and kicked out several times, surprisingly powerful thrusts that prevented anyone from capturing him. The people in the room were shadow shapes now, like figures from a nightmare.
Looking down, Joss realized that he stood on his bare feet and was in a slight crouch, with his hands stiff and the fingers pointed straight ahead, like a martial arts pose—training he’d never had, but the menacing posture was keeping them at bay. He wasn’t sure how he had accomplished that posture. The
skin on his hands looked odd and veiny, and his fingers were darker than the rest of his skin, and seemed to glow a little. A trick of light?
Interrupting his thoughts, Joss saw movement on his right behind the viewing window. Involuntarily he spun on his bare feet, so that his fingers were now pointed at whoever was on the other side of that clearplex—as if to protect himself against a threat there. A name came to Joss’s awareness as he recognized the person: Andruw Twitty, his roommate from the Seattle Reservation.
He felt a surge of anger, didn’t want him there, looking in and intruding.
The five fingers of Joss’s left hand became even darker, then black, and he saw them glow more, as if they were little Splitter barrels about to fire. Suddenly streaks of black light shot from the fingers, breaking the plex of the viewing room, exploding it into fragments and melting it into a gooey mass that dripped onto the floor.
He heard Twitty scream out in pain. It was an alarming sound, and Joss hoped he had not seriously injured the young man, despite his irritating, self-serving ways. Looking at the melted plex, Joss wondered if he had tapped into some sort of Splitter power. He shuddered, fearing that something terrible had found its way into his body, and that he didn’t know how to control it. He lowered his hands, tried to calm himself.
In his moment of hesitation, he felt strong arms around him, holding his arms and legs, tearing his gown and wrestling him to the ground—and the pricking of needles into his body. He didn’t resist, though he sensed that he could escape if he wanted to.
But Joss wasn’t sure if he wanted to get away. He wasn’t at all certain what form of life he had become, and worried about the harm he might cause away from this hospital, the havoc he might wreak on the outside world if allowed to roam free. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I am the first of my kind, he thought again, the only one of my kind.
The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma Page 16