Mortal Remains

by Christopher Evans

  The images receded. I drifted back into some semblance of normal consciousness.

  “Do you expect me to swallow this?” I said.

  “It’s the truth.”

  This was Nina. On her face was a kind of contained anxiety, as if she desperately wanted me to believe it.

  “I don’t remember being entombed,” I said. “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “You have no memory,” the boy—Lucian—said. “It’s quite likely it no longer exists.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Much of your body was quite severely decayed, including parts of the cerebral cortex.”

  “We can reconstitute a brain,” said Chloe, “but we can’t necessarily recover the memories that were stored in it.”

  I looked at my hands. They were perfect, even down to the fingernails.

  “I can’t remember anything either,” Nina told me. She must have seen my distress because she closed her hand around mine. The emotional effect was far more powerful than I had anticipated, a surge of comfort at her touch.

  After a while I asked, “Are there others?”

  “Only the two of us. We were the only ones who survived.”

  Chloe and Lucian were talking together again; I couldn’t hear their words. They were plainly of this world, whatever it was. My very weakness was proof that something drastic had happened to me, but to accept that I had been rebuilt cell by cell from some pile of mortifying flesh … there was no adequate response I could give.

  “You know nothing about us?” I said at length.

  “Nothing,” Chloe said. “I’m sorry.”

  I swam away once more, as if my consciousness was fragile, still convalescent. It must have only been for a moment, because nothing had changed when I resurfaced.

  “The dreams,” I said. “I’ve been having some very strange dreams …”

  “We can talk about them later,” Chloe said. “You must take it a little at a time. You mustn’t overwhelm yourself.”

  Nina was stroking my hand. I studied the line of her chin and long-necked throat.

  “Were you revived before me?”

  “There was less deterioration,” Lucian said. “She was more fortunate.”

  “Don’t you remember anything?”

  She met my gaze. There was still anxiety in her eyes. “Nothing at all. I’m as blank as you, Nathan.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  She flinched at the venom in my voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t easy.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  I felt her grip relaxing, and now it was I who held on. It must have been far more difficult for her, being the first to revive, waiting for me to recover too, no doubt desperate for some companionship of her own kind yet unable to say too much too soon.

  “We had to proceed very slowly and carefully,” Lucian was saying. “Normal cell regeneration poses no problems, but loss of brain tissue is much more problematical.”

  He had a brisker, more disinterested manner than Chloe, as if only the facts were pertinent.

  “We do our best to restore the original neural networks as accurately as possible to maximize the potential for memory retrieval. The success of the procedure depends on the existing loss of cortical tissue. In both your cases, we did not have high hopes.”

  “Are you doctors?”

  “Not ourselves personally,” Lucian said. “But you were given the best attention we could provide.”

  “We hoped you would remember who you were,” Chloe said. “Believe us, we’re as disappointed as you must be. It would have been interesting to have your recollections of the distant past.”

  For a split second I flashed away and saw myself as a walking corpse, blackened and festering. I lurched back to reality and hoped that the spasm of fear I felt had not shown.

  “I remember nothing,” I said flatly. I looked at Nina.

  “It’s the same for me,” she insisted.

  “You’ve got a name,” I pointed out.

  “Given, like yours. Nina and Nathan.” She shrugged. “It’s as good as anything.”

  “You recovered faster than me.”

  “Only because I had a head start. Otherwise there’s no difference between us. I only know what I’ve learned since I was restored.”

  “Then your experiment has failed,” I said to Chloe and Lucian. “You’ve rebuilt us, but all you’ve got are two empty vessels.”

  Chloe was anxious to reassure me. “Please don’t misunderstand us. We revived you because you weren’t dead. Your chambers were functioning, if imperfectly. You still survived.”

  “We have a duty to preserve life,” Lucian said. “What was our alternative—to leave you to rot? Consider yourself fortunate. Is not your very existence—or should we say, re-existence—a miracle of a sort in itself? To be alive after so long a period of death—”

  “How long?”

  “It’s impossible to say, alas. We have no knowledge of when you were entombed. Very little documentary evidence survived the great upheavals that followed the settlement of the worlds of the Noospace. Your missing memories are small things compared to the vanished histories of entire peoples and places.”

  “And yet,” said Chloe, “it’s quite obvious that you have some sense of self, no matter how absent the facts may be. Is that not so?”

  I couldn’t deny this. Or at least I couldn’t deny the anger I felt at my predicament. Mine and Nina’s.

  “Did they find us together?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “You two were the only bodies which were viable. The rest were quite mortified.”

  “We’ve preserved what tissue remained, of course,” said Lucian. “Ancient genetic material is always potentially valuable.”

  “But there are no plans to build any more monsters like us.”

  They barely managed to mask their distaste, and even Nina gave me a disapproving look. Was I being ungrateful? Perhaps I was, but this at least was a sign of my selfhood; it seemed unlikely they had programmed that into me.

  “Are Nina and I related?”

  Chloe shook her head. “There’s no genetic connection. You both arise from quite separate ur-populations.”

  “And there’s nothing to tell whether we knew one another?”

  “Nothing. The chamber had been breached. Everything was in an advanced state of corrosion and decay when we found it.”

  “Corrosion? Here on the Moon?”

  Chloe smiled. “You see, you remember some things, even if you don’t realize it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In your time, the Moon was probably airless. But it has had an atmosphere ever since the Noosphere was established here.”

  How long had I been asleep? Hundreds of years? More? It seemed futile even to speculate. When you could remember nothing, how could you weigh one fact against another? How could you decide what was important? Remarkable? Insignificant? Did I know that the Moon had once been airless? I felt as if I knew nothing. Yet I could speak, use words, understand meanings.

  I must have mumbled something, because Lucian said:

  “We’ve been acclimatizing you. We’ve endeavoured to supply both of you with the necessary understanding to familiarize yourself with your new surroundings. This was essential, since you now live in our world.”

  “But you shouldn’t try to rush the process,” Chloe said. “Your nervous system is still adjusting, and there will be lapses, minor confusions, fluctuations in homeostasis.”

  So they were to be expected—the mood swings, the fugues. There was some relief in that.

  “Are the dreams part of it?”

  “Part of your adjustment, yes,” said Chloe. “They’ll play a vital role in your recovery.”

  This intrigued me; I wanted to ask more. But I had started to feel cold, and then an uncontrollable shivering overtook me, my teeth vibrating so much that I couldn’t speak. Nina began to tuck the bedclothes around me,
leaning over me and whispering that it was a perfectly normal part of the process of recovery. She was so close I could smell her body heat, and I warmed to it.

  This time I knew I was sinking down to sleep. The last thing I felt was her hand on my forehead. Like a benediction.

  • • •

  “Uprise! Uprise! Uprise!”

  Marea lurched from sleep to find the alarm cock squatting on her chest. She swiped at it and it fluttered away, squawking, leaving a foul odour behind.

  She closed her eyes and counted to twenty before finally heaving herself up in her bunk. The bird was rooting about among the debris under one of the bunks while still burbling: “Rise and mine, rise and mine.” She flung a boot at it but it hopped away, farting. It was mangy and flatulent, used to maltreatment from the cons.

  As ever, the air inside the long-hut was stale with bodily odours. The tiredness remained, as it always did, a core of permanent exhaustion that no amount of sleep could cure. Belatedly, Marea realized that the rest of the hut was empty, the others gone.

  “What time is it?” she asked the bird.

  “Thirty after Jove-down.”

  “You let me oversleep!”

  “Special dispensation, special dispensation.”

  She wondered why, then stopped herself, refusing to fan the slightest ember of hope.

  Her suit was folded neatly on her bunk as a pillow. Yawning, she slipped it on, forcing her legs through the thick padded layers, zipping it up to the neck. She retrieved her boots, and then her cloak crawled out from under the bunk and wrapped itself around her neck. She stroked its muzzle, its patchy fur. It was malnourished but never complained, gently purring against her neck.

  Hastily evacuated, the long-hut looked ransacked, its cluttered surfaces coated with mustardy dust. The foetid smell of the place—the cast-off boots, unwashed clothes, the permanent stink of exhaustion scarcely registered on her now. Though she did not feel like eating, she paused at the dispenser to cram a meal cracker in her mouth, slurping it down with tepid water from a nipple. She fed a few morsels to the cloak. Within seconds, the cracker was swelling in her belly, banishing hunger for a few hours.

  She put her masked hood on, adjusted the oculars and checked the air supply. At her command, the airvalve inhaled, and she went out through it, the alarm cock muttering: “Alone again ork, alone again ork,” as she went.

  Jupiter had dropped over the sooty horizon, its amber glow silhouetting the rugged hills. The sun was up on the opposite side of the black sky, shrunken and distant, its light smeared by high-level haze. Haemus labour camp was four long-huts arranged cross-wise on a dusty plateau surrounded by russet plains, darker crusted lakes and bright lava flows. In theory, the habitats were air-conditioned, but the huts were so old and decrepit their lungs barely recycled gases, let alone cleansed them. The mining teams worked Jove-nights to avoid the heat and radiation.

  A few trundlers were already moving off down the escarpment to the mining ridges; others were loading their teams. Vargo, Marea’s overseer, sat on his three-wheeled trike, gloved hands spread wide on its curving horns, supervising everything. He motioned to her, and she went over and stood there while he shouted at a laggardly group of inmates. Even with her suitcom thumbed down, his every word could be heard. He liked the sound of his own voice, did Vargo.

  His oculars were usually adjusted to nearsight so that his scarred milky eye was magnified. Without turning, he said, “Enjoy the extra half-hour?”

  “What did I do to deserve it?”

  “Special job for you today. You’ve got ten minutes before your transport arrives. Maybe you want to get over to the postroom while you can. There’s a fax for you.”

  A fax. Again she tried not to feel hopeful. In the year since she had been transported to Io she’d had no communication with anyone offworld. And faxes were only allowed under special consideration.

  He gave her the number, reciting it from memory. She didn’t linger, scampering off across to the administrative cluster at the centre of the huts. The postroom was one of the smaller blisters. Marea punched in her identification, gave the floor manager the fax number and the airvalve opened.

  She tore her hood off the instant she was inside. A large optic winked into life, filled with the image of a red-haired woman holding a baby in her arms. Marea immediately knew that the child was her daughter. Or, rather, Salih and Yuri’s daughter. She had heard nothing of the baby since her arrest and exile.

  “Hello,” said the woman. “I’m Lynith, and you must be Marea. They asked me to call to let you know how Rashmi’s getting on. As you can see, she’s fine.”

  She held out the child in the white swathe of a snuggle. It was plump, healthy—Yuri’s child, she saw immediately. Well, both men had insisted they leave the paternity to chance, but Salih—

  Salih was dead. And Yuri. And now the child had a fostermother. At least they had given her the name she and her husbands had chosen beforehand. It was a small consolation.

  Marea stepped close and looked into its bright-cheeked, blue-eyed face. The fax was interactive, the child redolent of milk and clean linen. Marea wanted to pick her up, hold her, but that luxury was not available.

  There were the noises of children in the background. She looked at Lynith, freckled with a kindly, tolerant face.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

  “I’ve got five other fosterlings and six of my own,” Lynith responded. “We’re in Ares City, four of us and the children. We run a production company, doing historical reconstructions on Channel Eight Eighty. Maybe you’ve seen some of them? The Fall of the Romulan Empire, The Great Exodus, The Triumph of the Afterlife?”

  Marea smiled. It was clear that the child had been put into the care of good solid citizens.

  “How does she sleep?” she asked.

  “Like a baby,” Lynith replied. And then laughed to hear herself say it. “She’s no trouble at all. You should be proud of her. She feeds well, too.”

  “Do you know where I am?”

  There was a moment’s pause, while the program contemplated its reply.

  “You’re on Io.”

  “I’ve been here almost a year,” she said. She wanted to say: “Unsentenced”, but knew she couldn’t.

  Lynith’s holo looked uncomfortable. “We’re not supposed to talk about that.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It was good of you to fax me.”

  “They asked me to. Don’t worry, we’re taking good care of her. She’ll come to no harm. I’m seventy-two, and this batch are the third generation I’ve raised. A lot have stayed with us, acting in our productions. Maybe Rashmi will, too.” Her voice took on a confidential tone. “In fact, we’re thinking of using her as the infant Orela in The Lives of the Advocates. She might end up a celebrity.”

  The pager announced that there were only thirty seconds remaining. Marea looked at the child one last time, now certain she would never see it again.

  “I have to go,” she said. “Thank you for letting me see her.”

  “It was a pleasure,” Lynith replied. “You take care out there.”

  Marea made to turn away, but found she didn’t want to move. She stared at the child until the images winked out as the optic blanked.

  Outside, Vargo was still perched on his trike, and she could hear Andreas’s voice on the comlink. He was the base governor, a stern man seldom seen in the flesh.

  The fax had left her feeling hollowed out rather than comforted, and she longed for the seclusion of a shrine, the comforts of communion with her ancestors. But there were no shrines for the cons on Io. That was part of the punishment.

  On the ridge was a small caterpillar, its plump flanks dusty from the climb up the escarpment. A paddler lay upturned in its cargo space, webbed feet pointing to the sky. Two figures were sitting in the driving chamber, both of them men.

  Vargo pointed a gloved hand. “That’s your transport,” he told her. “Get abo
ard.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “We’ve got a feral.”

  “A feral?”

  “It was hiding out in one of the old tunnels over at Juno. We didn’t even know it was there. Escaped a couple of hours ago. Fried a few and left a few more in the shaft with first-degree burns before flying off.”

  “A dragon?”

  “What else? You’ve been assigned to the swat team.” He reached into the trike’s holdall and pulled out a stun-rod.

  “This is for me?” she said.

  “Your chance for glory. Make a killing.”

  So that was why she’d had the favours, the extra half-hour, the fax. A sop before sending her out on something really dangerous.

  The telescopic rod had a cone-shaped discharger at its business end; a twist grip controlled the power.

  “I’ve never used one of these before,” she said. “I don’t know anything about hunting.”

  “You’ve seen the briefings. We think it’s hiding out near the lakelands around Cinnabar Ridge. Those two’ll show you the ropes.”

  “Why me? I’ve nearly done my year’s term. They can’t hold me any longer without sentencing.”

  “Orders. I don’t ask. Look on the positive side. It’s a break from the tunnels.”

  “A chance to get fried, you mean. Is it adult?”

  “Adolescent, we think.”

  And so at its most unpredictable, she thought.

  “A big one?”

  “Biggish, by all accounts.”

  “Don’t try to sugar it.”

  He set the rod to maximum. “We’ll track you from here, keep an eye on your progress.”

  “It isn’t fair! I’ve been expecting my release date any day.”

  Vargo shrugged. “Luck of the draw. Maybe there’ll be something when you get back.”

  She scrutinized him on zoom. His eyes told her nothing.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said emphatically. “I want you back in one piece.”

  “I didn’t know you cared.”

  One of the men yelled at her: “You coming, or are we going to sit here till our back ends freeze?”