by Nik Abnett
She also noticed that up to six weeks could pass between the date of the child’s birth and the date of its registration.
Dharma was concerned that she could trust very little from the twentieth century certificates that she was able to view, and she could find no evidence of any state authority verifying the births.
She knew little about how children had once been conceived, except that it was by a physical act between a man and a woman. Surely, any woman could accomplish this act with any man, and yet it was, so often, the fathers who informed the authorities of the birth of the child. It presumed that the father was, in-fact, genetically related to the child he was registering.
It seemed to Dharma that the freedom of physical contact between people that had been allowed in the twentieth century meant that no man could be confident that he was the genetic parent of any child. Of course, she was relying on her grandmother’s second-hand stories, filtered through her mother, and they might just be myths. She couldn’t know for sure.
These days things were much neater. Sperm was delivered to compatible, eligible women, selected to provide the strongest genetic combinations for the best chance of producing robust children. It was the reason Dharma had borne little physical resemblance to her mother. Her skin was brown, where her mothers had been pale; her eyes were a dark hazel while her mother’s had been grey, and her hair kinked and curled while her mother’s had been fair and straight and shiny. In fact, Dharma had not seen anyone as pale as her mother for a very long time.
It didn’t matter, they had other things in common.
Dharma remembered, from downloading science school, that the human genome project had not been completed until early in the twenty-first century, only decades before the Deluge. She also remembered that accurate genetic testing for familial relationships had not been available until the 1980s. She did a quick calculation in her head and realised that, statistically, for the period from 1980 to the Deluge, the percentage of the population that was tested to prove the paternity of a child must be negligible.
In all but the rarest instances, the spouse of the pregnant woman simply assumed the child was his genetic offspring.
It wasn’t good enough. There were no historic records that Dharma could rely on to find a blood relation on any male line.
Dharma would have to look at the women, if she was to trace any credible family members.
“But it’s too long ago,” she said, into thin air. She knew that her grandmother had been born on October 15th, but she didn’t know what year. She knew that her name had been Verity Tuke. She got absolutely nowhere with her limited knowledge.
Dharma searched her memory for anything that her mother might have told her about her grandmother. She wished she could ask her but she couldn’t, and her mother’s medical, employment and domestic history, open to her for twelve months after her death, had now been sealed by the state, so she could no longer access it. She began to wish that she’d started her search sooner… Much, much sooner.
Dharma had not known her grandfather, only that her grandmother had told stories about him, and about their relationship, to her mother. Her mother had passed some of those stories on to Dharma, but Dharma hadn’t taken much notice. She thought her mother told the stories to remember her own life, her own history, and her connections with the past before the Deluge. She wished that she could remember more of the details of those stories, and more about the people involved.
Dharma looked again at the facsimile certificate. She looked at the column marked ‘name, surname and maiden surname of mother’ it read, ‘Jane Smith’, and then, below, ‘formerly Jones.’ Then she looked back at the column marked ‘name and surname of father’. It read, ‘John Smith’. This fictional woman, the mother of this fictional child, had changed her surname to that of her fictional husband. All members of this fictional family carried one surname, that of the patriarch, ‘John Smith’.
In the New Wave, children carried the same surname as their mothers. They had an identifying unique number for the sperm donor. That number appeared on Dharma’s id, but she never gave it a thought. It was simply an alpha-numeric, and she saw hundreds of those every day in her work.
Dharma went back to the visuals of the genuine certificates, and found the same thing over and over again. For all the certificates where a child had both a mother and a father listed, the mother had adopted the father’s surname. Perhaps her grandmother’s name was not Verity Tuke, after all.
Dharma’s grandmother had passed down lots of stories that made very little sense, some from before the Deluge and some from afterwards. It was the stories she had told about the two years, during the Deluge that were most confusing and surprising. They were the stories that Dharma had always doubted; they seemed so implausible.
Four
Verity was young when the Deluge began. She had been at university, studying for her first degree, when things started to change. Her father had demanded that she return home, before the restricted transport links were severed entirely.
“I can’t come home, Pa. What about Sage?”
She’d been listening to her father for ten or fifteen minutes on their weekly Zoom call. She could see how angry he was, how determined that she must come home. At first, he’d tried being casual, tried cajoling her, tried to use her mum and her sister as leverage. None of it worked. None of the dozens of e-mails and texts he’d sent her during the past several weeks had worked, either.
Verity was in love with Sage, and she wouldn’t leave him. There was no way for him to get home, since his parents lived overseas, and if she left him on campus and went home herself, she couldn’t be sure that she’d ever see him again.
She was twenty-one; she could make her own decisions, and she chose to stay right where she was, with Sage.
“You’re coming home!” her father said. “It’s not safe. I’ve e-mailed your ticket already. Just use it.”
Zoom had frozen for a moment as he finished speaking, and Verity was afraid that he’d signed off or, worse still, that the internet connection was down.
She was relieved when his face started to move, as he began to say something else. She cut him off.
“I know you want me to come home, Pa. I know Mum wants me to come home… I just… I just can’t. I want to be with you, but I can’t leave Sage.”
“Boyfriends come and go. They’re like buses… There’ll be another one along in a minute.”
“Buses!” said Verity. She could feel her face reddening and tears gather in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t know what else to say.
Pa sighed, his presence large beside the small inset picture of her own miserable face. She knew that he was seeing the screen in reverse, that he would see how frightened and upset she was, that he would see her tears.
“Point taken,” he said, and his face grew a little smaller on her screen as he slumped back in his seat. “My old sayings don’t hold much water any more, do they?”
Verity shook her head. She couldn’t speak, but swallowed hard on her tears, and sniffed.
“Okay,” said Pa. “So, there aren’t any more buses… You know that you still have to come home, though, right? If they shut down the campus, you’ll have to leave, and, by then, you might not be able to get home.”
“I know, Pa,” said Verity, sniffing again.
“And you love him?”
“We’ve been together for two years, and I love him more every day. Mum was married by the time she was twenty-one, and you weren’t much older.”
“No, I wasn’t much older.”
They looked at each other for a few more moments.
“How about this,” Pa finally said. “How about if I e-mail you a ticket for Sage, and he comes home with you?”
Verity held her breath for a moment, then said, “Can we do that? Do you think it’s allowed?”
“He’s been in the country the required length of time, and the campus infirmary can certificate him, if he passes thei
r tests. Yes, it should be possible… But we have to do it right now, and if he doesn’t pass the tests you have to promise me that you’ll come home alone.”
“If he doesn’t pass the tests, what makes you think I’ll pass them?” asked Verity.
“You’ll pass them,” said Pa. “You’re a chip off the old block.”
Verity wiped her eyes and smiled. Her father smiled back.
“Get to it. I’ll sort that other ticket out right now.”
“Thanks, Pa,” said Verity. “Love you.”
“You, too,” he said, and Verity waved at her father as she hit the button to end the call.
Five
Dharma was more than a little thankful when she found open access to all pre-Deluge records. There had to be a way to find her grandmother. She hadn’t been able to using the name Verity Tuke, but she knew that her husband’s name was Sage, and that his surname was also Tuke. Perhaps she could track down his birth certificate.
In the back of her mind, Dharma couldn’t help doubting the records, wondering whether Sage Tuke had really been her mother’s genetic father. On the other hand, the Deluge lockdown had meant that families were isolated in their homes for long periods of time, and it might be difficult for her grandmother to speak to, let alone meet, or do the sex thing with someone else. According to her mother, Dharma’s grandmother had liked sex, and if that were true, she might have done it with more than one man, but it would have been pretty difficult to find a way to do it during the time of the protocols.
“Mum first,” she said, as she started speaking the details into the VR. “Connie Tuke, born 25th October 2042.” The screen scrolled, and Dharma wondered whether she might need to give more information, especially as her mother had been born during the Deluge.
“Oh. Correction: Constance Tuke, born 25th October 2042.”
The screen continued to scroll for several seconds, before flashing a data box.
+Data not found. Complete *Field+
“Show Field.”
The field was headed +place of birth+.
Of course, Dharma had lived with her mother for the duration of her education. Part of the reason she had downloaded school for so long was because her mother couldn’t bear their separation. Eventually the time had come when Dharma had to go out to work, her skill-set complete. They had lost their home and both been moved to single occupancy housing but, by then, Constance had senior status, so they could not be moved to the same building.
Dharma had made the best of her skills, so, she was able to ensure that they lived in the same district just three miles apart. It meant that she was permitted to visit her mother once a week, making the journey on-foot, without the need to pass through a quarantine wipe. Dharma had to take an apartment on the sixth floor of an old building, but she quickly got used to that, and she loved the extra space. Dharma was fit, and jogged the distance to her mother’s in about thirty-five minutes, closer to forty if the weather was bad. She had even walked it several times in the snow, taking a little over an hour.
They were lucky, most adult children saw their elderly mothers, intermittently at best, and some never saw their mothers again once their education was over. Very few people could manipulate data the way that Dharma could.
Dharma knew exactly where she’d been born, in the same apartment that she’d grown up in. She didn’t know for certain where her mother had been born, but was able to make an educated guess, and began with her own district.
“BRd1,” she said.
A data box quickly appeared on the screen.
+Data not recognised+
Dharma stared at the data box for several moments. She didn’t know what to try next, and, besides, her lunch break was coming to an end, and she had to log back into W.W.’s intranet home page.
She closed the internet connection, and went back to work.
The following day, having given the problem some thought, Dharma used her lunch break to look for old maps. She quickly discovered that maps from the Deluge were not in the public domain, and she doubted she could gain access via W.W. without a convincing reason for wanting them. Probably, better not to try.
Older maps were in the public domain. Dharma didn’t know what had been changed since, or by how much, but it was worth a try. Most of the old maps she found were for the United Kingdom. She didn’t recognise the name, but her first level of internet access was national.
Dharma pulled up a map at random, and said, “District field” into the VR.
+Data not recognised+
Dharma thought for a moment.
“Correction,” she said. “Bromley.”
Dharma had always called BRd1 her home, but her mother insisted on calling it Bromley.
The image zoomed in, with the header ‘London Borough of Bromley’. She saw an irregular shaped green area with a red boundary. There were a number of lines, in various colours, some straight, others more like scribbles, running this way and that across the green area. There were also a number of grey, blocky patches, breaking up the green, with words printed across them.
One of these grey areas was labelled ‘Bromley’. Others bore names like ‘Orpington’ and ‘Downe’.
“Okay.” She pulled up the tab for registration of births, and said, “Bromley,” when the screen prompted +place of birth+.
She held her breath for a moment, and then read the data box.
+Data not found+
Dharma wasn’t ready to give up.
“Correction: Downe,” she said.
+Data not found+
By the time Dharma had corrected through all the grey patches in the London Borough of Bromley, she was several minutes late signing back into W.W.’s intranet, and she still hadn’t found her mother’s birth registration.
Undeterred, she decided to continue, no matter how long it took. Her mother had died almost two years ago, so time was already passing, but she had plenty more of it ahead of her. She had a good job, and a comfortable home, and she had lived without a significant emotional connection for all that time; she could wait a while longer. More than anything, Dharma had good access to the internet, and she knew how to search for and interpret data. If anyone could find a blood relation, Dharma knew that it was her.
New-wave records would probably not have begun until well after the Deluge, given the more immediate problems. She’d convinced herself that her mother’s birth registration would be in the old format, but now wondered where to look next.
Dharma didn’t log on to the internet for a couple of days. Her access wasn’t unlimited, she’d taken a long lunch, and she was required to make up the time before the end of the week. She would begin again on Monday.
Six
Concord Penn glanced at Blythe as he sat at his station. She looked odd, but he couldn’t work out why, except he was concerned that she might be sick. He’d been alone in the cubicle with her for more than a week, and they hadn’t spoken in all that time. He missed Joy’s company, even though he couldn’t stand her. At least his responses to her tended to be emotional, even if those emotions were generally negative. He was merely indifferent to Blythe.
Blythe smelled the sweet hazelnut in Con’s coffee. It brought her at least halfway back to reality. She cleared her private connection screen with a keystroke, and the usual invoice template popped up in front of her.
Con had come back to the cubicle a few minutes before she’d expected him, so Blythe sat quietly, while she settled her mind.
Con was looking over at her again.
“You look pale,” he said.
“No!” said Blyth, surprised. She knew she wasn’t sick, but she dreaded anyone else thinking she might be. It could set a whole system of protocols into action that she didn’t need and couldn’t cope with. Blythe’s cheeks reddened, but the warm yellow of her skin tone remained pale. She looked drained. She tried a small smile on her co-worker.
Con backed his chair a little further from her, turning it on its wheels so th
at they were facing each other, about two metres apart. He peered at her. She really didn’t want the attention, but she knew she had to answer for herself.
“Are you ill?” asked Con.
“No! It’s just that I had a bit of a shock.”
“What sort of a shock?”
“The shocking kind,” said Blythe, her pallor gone, her face returning to its warmer shade. She smiled more broadly.
“Well, you don’t look sick now,” said Con, still peering at her. “And you’re funny.”
“All this time, and you hadn’t worked that out?” asked Blythe.
“You don’t talk much.”
“Joy talks enough for all of us. Although, you seem to enjoy that.”
“It’s contact.”
“Not any contact I’d want to be on the receiving end of,” said Blythe. “I don’t know how you put up with it.”
“I don’t know how you sit there, silent, when she’s mouthing off about you,” said Con.
“Touché.”
They didn’t speak for a moment.
“Are we actually having a conversation?” asked Blythe.
“Only if you tell me why you were pale,” said Con, “what kind of shocking shock you suffered.”
“Trust me, there was no suffering involved.”
“So, tell me,” said Con.
“Sorry,” said Blythe. “Can’t. Time to get back to work.”
“I’ll find out, one way or the other, so you might as well just tell me now.”
Blythe had begun keying-in and checking the details on the latest of thousands of invoices that she’d processed. She said nothing, but turned to face Con, and smiled again.
“Okay, you win,” he said, rolling his chair back to his station. “For now.”
Seven