The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  “James . . . I might agree with you under different circumstances. But the brass are very keen on the robots, and understandably so.”

  “Understandably? Maybe you understand, but . . .”

  “James, we will not have time to test the long-term effectiveness of the antidote on adults. You heard the general at our meeting this morning. We are talking about the endgame now. We need to keep making progress toward the Gen5 option.”

  Rubbing his hand over the stubble of his unshaved beard, James stared up at the low-hung ceiling of the building that every day seemed more like a prison. He found himself thinking about his parents—the missed holidays, the excuses. He’d only seen them once, for his father’s seventieth birthday last June. They still didn’t know he was in Los Alamos . . .

  He blinked. Stay focused. Rudy was right. The bots were his allies in this fight. IC-NAN was the only enemy. Across Kendra’s lab he spotted a small vid screen, the freckled face of a young female reporter based in Germany. “We have reports of a ‘deadly flu’ in parts of Russia, with symptoms suspiciously like those seen most recently in northern India,” she was saying.

  He had to face it—he’d most likely never have the option he most desired—to seed a “normal” human colony on earth, parents and their children surviving the epidemic together. And worse, his chances of saving those he loved were slim to none.

  He brought up his files on Kendra’s computer, pressing “send” to initiate the secure DNA sequence transmission to Rudy. “I need to catch some shut-eye,” he muttered.

  “Dulces sueños, James.” Rudy’s soft voice echoed in his ear. “Sweet dreams.”

  14

  JUNE 2065

  KAI WATCHED SELA and Kamal warily as he poked at the waning embers of their cooking fire. It had become a standoff. Each day, he found himself torn between Sela’s overwhelming urge to wander and Kamal’s staunch unwillingness to do so. They’d made a pact—no one was to be left alone. But this meant they all had to stick together, even when they didn’t agree as to when or where to go.

  “We’ll never find anybody if we just sit here!” Sela stormed.

  “I found you two this way.” Kamal smiled gently. “Naga told me that the water would bring others. It did. I must believe that it will continue to do so.”

  Perhaps Kamal was right, but Kai felt no better for it. After all, Kamal had waited three years for him and Sela to come along. And hadn’t Naga also warned him that the spring would go dry someday?

  “Ow!” Sela spat out, hurling her battle-worn wrench to the ground. She’d been working on her bike, trying to straighten a bent wheel fork. Now she stood back, sucking at her pinched thumb. “I need to go out and at least find a new wrench!”

  “I don’t think today’s a good day,” Kai said, willing calmness into his voice.

  “Why not?” Sela turned on him, her clenched fists resting on her hips.

  “I just . . . The air has a smell to it . . .” Kai stood his ground. The previous night as he’d trudged back from Kamal’s spring, his arms full of brimming canteens and water bottles, he’d noticed the shift. The wind had been stiff for days, but it had been a hot wind. Now it was blowing northerly, cold and dry. As they slept, the temperature had dropped at least thirty degrees Fahrenheit, a change not uncommon in the desert but strange for this time of year. Up toward the road, the sky sparkled blue. But there was an eerie look to the shadows at the base of the escarpment. An electricity in the air forced the hairs on his arms to attention.

  Kamal raised his head, his nose poked up clear of the aromatic fire-smoke. “Kai is right. It smells like a storm.”

  “But the sky’s clear!” Sela protested. She stomped one foot in the dust, her patience at an end. Then she turned to her Mother. “You’re just as bad as they are. What do you mean, we shouldn’t travel today? We won’t go far.” And with that, she climbed aboard the bike and whirred off, Alpha-C in pursuit.

  Kamal stared after her, crestfallen. “She’ll be okay,” Kai reassured him. “Alpha will see to it.”

  “But we promised that we would not separate.”

  “She’ll be okay.” Kai said it with all the conviction he could muster. But he wasn’t sure he believed it. “It’s cold. Let’s move the fire inside the cave.” Standing up, he gathered his blanket from the ground. “Kamal, what does your snake friend say about this strange weather?”

  “We have not spoken in many months—ever since your arrival,” Kamal replied. “She is afraid to come close.”

  “She probably knows we’d find her delicious!” Kai laughed. But immediately, he thought better of it. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “No, you are not.” Kamal smiled.

  Kai hunkered down on the floor of the cave, piling twigs near the center—trying to keep his mind off Sela. “Could you teach me to do that thing you do? Medi . . .”

  Kamal used embers from the fire outside to ignite the twigs. “Meditation? As I said, I have not had much use for it since you came.”

  “But what’s it like? Is it like when we talk to our Mothers?” Kai asked.

  “No . . . There are no words.”

  “Pictures? Like a dream?”

  “It is a place. A feeling. An experience. It is like being, but in a different world.”

  “How do you go there?”

  “In the beginning, my Mother trained me to focus on my breathing, on the beating of my heart. But I became too afraid. What if, as I sat there breathing, dreaming . . . what if something happened? I couldn’t hear my Mother. What if something happened to her? My own heart became my enemy, beating faster and faster.” Kamal closed his eyes, his hands resting on his bony knees. “But then she taught me a different way. A way to see everything at once. A way to see things I’d never noticed.”

  “Like snakes talking.”

  “And this charge in the air.” Kamal opened his eyes, gazing directly at Kai now. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  Kai looked out through the cave entrance. Nearby, Rosie and Beta stood at attention, a dull sunlight gleaming off their flanks. A chill ran up his spine, separate from the chill of the wind. “Yes. And the light. It’s . . . different.”

  Kamal was standing now, approaching the entrance to peer anxiously at his Mother. After a short pause, he turned back to Kai. “I just asked my Mother if we should fly out to find Sela,” he murmured. “But she says conditions are not acceptable. Alpha-C did not want to travel either. Something is wrong . . .” Kamal set one foot outside, then pulled back with a jerk. “Ouch!”

  A gust blew across the clearing, sending a barrage of small stones against the metallic flanks of the bots. Was it Alpha, returning? Pushing past Kamal, Kai glanced south. Nothing. Then northward.

  His mouth dropped open. High above the roadway whirled a cauldron of pure black, its billowing outlines etched against the backdrop of the bright sky. As he watched, a bolt of lightning illuminated the monstrous cloud from deep within.

  “Please board your cocoon.” It was Rosie.

  “But I’ll be safe in the cave . . .”

  “Not certain,” she stated flatly.

  The two bots were trundling toward them now, shielding them from an onslaught of pelting sand and pebbles. Kai waited for Kamal to go ahead of him, then ventured out into the maelstrom, his blanket wrapped over his head. He scaled Rosie’s treads, hefting his body awkwardly up through her hatch door as it swung wide. Twisting in his seat, he ducked down as his Mother resealed the hatch.

  Inside the cocoon, there was silence—only the pounding at his temples and the distant ping of sharp stones careening off Rosie’s flanks. Peering out, he saw Kamal inserting his lanky limbs through his Mother’s open hatch door. “What is it?” he asked Rosie.

  “Haboob.”

  “What?”

  Rosie paused as a hail of small rocks thudded off her hatch window. �
��Integrity maintained,” she said. “A haboob is a dust storm.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Unknown. Initiating air filtration.”

  Gripping his seat, Kai felt his stomach turn, a wave of helpless nausea. “What about Sela?”

  “Unknown.”

  “But she’s with Alpha-C. She’ll be okay . . .”

  Rosie didn’t respond. A low whirring sound emanated from somewhere under her front console as the air outside grew black as soot. The cocoon darkened. Kai stared at the console until he could see only a few small green lights at its base. He touched the hatch window in front of him, waiting for it to light up. “Can you turn on your hatch screen?”

  “Emergency protocol. All nonessential electronic systems have been disabled.”

  Disabled . . . Rosie had never done this before. Clamping his eyes shut, Kai ordered his lungs to stop heaving, his mind to stop racing. He remembered what Kamal had said, about meditation. Following his Mother’s example, he disabled his nonessential systems. With all his might, he imagined Sela and Alpha, safe and sound.

  15

  MAY 2053

  RICK AWOKE TO the sound of a siren blaring from the street. His arm flew out to touch the warm blankets to his right. Rose wasn’t there.

  He breathed deep, inhaling the familiar scents of her San Francisco apartment—the delicate fragrance of the piñon incense on her bedside table, the stronger aromas of eucalyptus wafting through the window and coffee brewing in the kitchen. Over the past year, he and Rose had given up all pretense of living separate lives. He’d taken every opportunity to spend time with her—summoning her for unnecessary personal appearances in Washington and Los Alamos, paying repeated visits to the institute at the Presidio to “check on progress.” He no longer felt the need to waste government money on San Francisco hotels.

  Across the room, his prosthesis was propped against the wall next to the video screen, where the national weather report scrolled quietly. Through the slit of the door next to the screen, he could hear the shower running. And outside, the siren drone Dopplered away up Divisadero Street as he allowed his heartbeat to slow.

  The bathroom door opened and Rose emerged, her long hair wrapped in a towel turban.

  “Up early?” he asked.

  “I’m nervous.”

  “About the presentation?”

  “Yes, among other things.”

  “I told you, it’s just a formality. Everyone’s already got their marching orders. They’re being given a chance to ask questions, but you really don’t have to answer any of them. And I’ll be right there with you.”

  “I’m telling you, Rick, I can’t quite get used to the way you people do things . . .”

  “You people? But you’re one of us, right?” Rick reached over to the nightstand, palming a small metal canister fit with an inhaler tube. “Speaking of which, did you take your dose?”

  “Yes, as soon as I woke up. I hate the taste . . .”

  “It’s tasteless.”

  Rose sat on the bedside, running the towel through her hair. “Not to me. It tastes . . . chemical. Aren’t you at all worried about taking it?”

  Rick examined the canister, its matte gold sides blank except for a single stamped label: “C-343.” Word had come down from Washington: The preliminary trials were complete. The newest version of the antidote wouldn’t kill them. It might not save them either, but it was all they had. All cleared personnel on the project had been ordered to take the cure. “Not any more worried than I am about everything else . . .” he said.

  So far as he knew, there was no emergency—yet. This was all about staying one step ahead of whatever might come. Agents embedded at WHO had sent soil organisms carrying the IC-NAN sequence harvested from a nature preserve on the outskirts of Rome. But so far this was the only positive identification of IC-NAN outside South Asia and the Middle East. They’d had reports describing outbreaks of a “strange respiratory illness” in Russian towns bordering the Caspian Sea, and new reports of an “incurable nonfebrile flu” were surfacing from as far north as Berlin and as far east as Japan. But none of these had yet been linked to IC-NAN. And so far, no reports had emerged from the mainland U.S., South America, or Canada.

  Rose turned to him, caressing his cheek with one warm hand. Her brow furrowed. “Did you hear all those sirens last night?”

  “Not really.” Rick smiled. “I was too busy.”

  “Seriously. I hear them all the time, what with all the med centers right down the street. But last night there were more than usual.”

  Rick glanced once more at the video screen across the room: a report on the latest Flexcoin valuation forecasts. He shook his head. “Must’ve been another one of those crazy street celebrations. Every time the Lasers win the division . . .”

  Taking a brush from her nightstand, Rose pulled it slowly through her towel-dried hair. “I’ll be sad to leave this place,” she said. “But I’m looking forward to handing over command of the Presidio and working full-time at Los Alamos.”

  “It’s been a long time coming,” Rick replied. “Speaking for myself, these flights to San Francisco have been wearing me out.”

  Rose batted playfully at his arm with her hairbrush. “You know you love it. But anyway, it’ll be great to work side by side with Kendra. There’s still so much we need to get done with the Gen5s . . .”

  Rick felt a buzz and looked down at his wrist phone. “It’s Blankenship,” he muttered. “Gotta take this.” He tapped the screen and it lit up, its dull green light illuminating his face. “Hello?”

  “Rick. I’m trying to get hold of Captain McBride. Are you with her right now?”

  His eyes traced the smooth curve of Rose’s spine as she stood up. “Yes. Yes, I am . . .”

  “We’ve got a situation. We need her here.”

  “There? In Washington?”

  “I can’t go into more detail on this line. How soon can she get here?”

  Rick sat up, his eyes meeting Rose’s as she turned to face him again. “Uh, I’m not sure. We’d need to get her down to the federal airfield. This time of day, that alone will take at least an hour . . .” Awkwardly, he rolled over and reached to retrieve his shirt from the floor.

  “Are you at the Presidio?”

  Rick paused. “No. At her place.”

  To his surprise, there was no pause at the other end. “Her apartment? Yes, I have the address here. North Point Street.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’ll be a car there in fifteen minutes. Make sure she’s ready.”

  “Me too?”

  “No. We only need cybersecurity personnel. You continue taking care of business there. I should be able to tell you more later this afternoon. Captain McBride’s office line. Fifteen hundred hours PDT.”

  “So . . . sir? I’m to proceed with the presentation that Captain McBride had planned?”

  “Yes. And go ahead with the next step too. The lockdown. The Presidio might be more important now than ever.” Blankenship clicked off.

  Rose was staring at him now, her damp auburn hair cascading loosely down her back. “I’ll help you pack,” Rick muttered.

  “Never mind,” she said, laying a hand softly on his arm. “It’s better if you just stay out of the way.” As Rick snapped on his prosthesis and pulled his trousers over his aching leg, Rose tied up her hair, donned her officer’s blues, then threw her toilet kit and a change of clothes into a small government-issued backpack. Last was her tablet, snugged into its secure pocket. Her hands shook as she filled her thermocup with the last of the Sumatran roast.

  Rick handed her a canister of the antidote as they headed down the stairs. “Take an extra,” he said.

  She smiled, but only slightly, as she pocketed it. “Thanks.”

  Out in the street, another siren sounded—another am
bulance, wending its way up the congested road. The government car was there at the curb, an officer behind the wheel.

  Rick held Rose’s arms, felt her shivering under her light coat. Lightly, he brushed his lips across hers. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” he whispered. “Call me when you get there.”

  “Sure,” she said, her eyes glistening. “As soon as I can.” As the car pulled from the curb, he could see her stricken look; she didn’t want to leave—not like this. Her hand rose to cover her lips. And he imagined a kiss, left there in the air as she sped away.

  * * *

  RICK PACED ROSE’S small office on the second floor of the Presidio Institute headquarters. The sign outside on the lawn proudly proclaimed the institute’s mission: Fostering peace and training new leaders. But he’d come here to help lock in the new order—and to help Rose announce a change in command. Unexpectedly, he’d had to do it without Rose. And to make matters worse, he’d had to begin the final push to secure the Presidio grounds.

  Facing the Presidio’s military team, he’d fumbled his way through the same presentation on which he’d endlessly coached Rose, adding his own hastily conceived explanation for the lockdown. He’d explained that the Presidio was now, for all intents and purposes, officially recommissioned, and that a new site commander would arrive shortly. He’d explained why enormous barbed fences had been erected at all Presidio borders save the gates, and why the gates themselves would now be guarded—because among other things, a Level 4 state of readiness entailed the stockpiling of munitions.

  He’d explained everything but why all of this was deemed necessary.

  These were military personnel. They didn’t need to know why—only what. Still, he could tell that the team members were nervous. No doubt they wondered why it was he, a general, and not Captain McBride who had given the presentation. They wondered where Rose had gone. As he’d walked the grounds afterward, he’d seen them talking to one another in hushed whispers, pausing whenever he approached. They had no idea what was going on, and he wasn’t offering any answers.